“Memories don’t live like people do.” ~Angie Stone
Thought everyone had at least one uncle
who’s a modern day Stagg-o-lee that pimps
a Kangol, & keeps a weed stash in the top
drawer of a nightstand, behind a pearl-
handled pocket knife he once used to shave
a man of his pride, then reused it to pop
open the caked lid of a paint can & then flicked
back the blade to release the ooze from inside
a Natural Light in his “love shack,” built
from beams of condemned houses—
a shotgun scaffold with a tin roof so thin
rain showers sound like gunshots, thick
insulation of peeping toms seeping from faux-
plywood walls to eye wallpaper of Jet beauty
centerfolds. I imagined my uncle as the Black Hugh
Hefner, Dolemite reincarnate who drove the white-
ibis ‘65 hardtop Dodge Dart with crimson interior
my father bartered for refurbishing, in exchange for
the German Shepherds he trained for Tallahassee
PD’s K-9 unit, afterhours & on days off from the steady
painting job that left an ash of primer so thick, on marble-
sized knuckles, cocoa butter couldn’t quench it. These
same hands extend a blunt rolled airtight out a car
window as a nod of advice, & a squint thru blood-
shot eyes led lifelong lessons on how to master pressure
points on my cousins’ hands & neck —an exercise in pain
tolerance carried over to a good card game of knuckles that’d
last as long as Jackie (his heavy-steady) could tolerate the screams
over her high, which was shorter than the width of their blue-
jean bellbottoms & those sideburns. Send me, shotgun
in that Dodge Dart as the Isleys croon drifting on a memory,
ain’t no place I’d rather be from the 8-track console.
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Contributor Notes
Yolanda J. Franklin’s work is forthcoming or has appeared in PMS: poemmemoirstory, Sugar House Review, Crab Orchard Review’s American South Issue, The Hoot & Howl of the Owl Anthology of Hurston Wright Writers’ Week, SPECS: Journal of Arts & Culture’s Kaleidoscopic Points Issue. Her awards include a 2012 Cave Canem fellowship, the 2013 Kingsbury Award, and several scholarships, including a summer at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Indiana Writer’s Week, and Colrain Poetry Manuscript Workshop. Her collection of poems, Ruined Nylons, was a finalist for the 2012 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Award. She is a graduate of Lesley University's MFA Writing Program and is a doctoral candidate at Florida State University.
