Jeff Mann

Yellow-Eye Beans

I sort them as I was taught (is this the way the Norns allot destinies?) picking out gravel, bits of dirt, the shriveled, discolored ones not fit to eat, fated for the trash. Sort, rinse, soak overnight, season with onion, hog jowl, bacon grease. Some more objective observer might see in my kitchen gestures—sorting these yellow-eye beans, or stringing half-runners, or rolling out pie crust or biscuits— my father’s, and, behind those, his mother’s, yours. Hillfolk head for beans and cornbread when the world turns surly— pinto, yellow-eye, October. These were your favorite. Simmering them, I remember you.I sort them as I was taught (is this the way the Norns allot destinies?) picking out gravel, bits of dirt, the shriveled, discolored ones not fit to eat, fated for the trash. Sort, rinse, soak overnight, season with onion, hog jowl, bacon grease. Some more objective observer might see in my kitchen gestures—sorting these yellow-eye beans, or stringing half-runners, or rolling out pie crust or biscuits— my father’s, and, behind those, his mother’s, yours. Hillfolk head for beans and cornbread when the world turns surly— pinto, yellow-eye, October. These were your favorite. Simmering them, I remember you.

Daddy's Cabbage

The huge head of cabbage fills his lap, milky jade moon, still a little grimy from the gardens at Forest Hill. As if he’d unearthed a dinosaur egg, or caught a minor asteroid on the fly. His smile is broad, proud, and in his face even at age eighty, there’s the force of Palatinate farmers, founders of our bloodline, men little different from us, despite the centuries, loving hearth fire, Moselle, sauerkraut flavored with bacon grease, a beautiful body undressed.