Quiches of Kush (for Maggie Grimason)

When I was small my mama took me up  the river bank where the old drunks hooted salty words at peanut farmers coming from the countryside. She gave me a fishing line and told me to wrap it round my shoulder up to my wrist, placed an old rust stained treble hook in my hand and said "tie that hook on boy and if you tug it just right, and you right with god, there's a quiche in there ".

Mama used to tell us about the quiche, about the oil dipped crust golden as an autumn cottonwood, about the egg whites so fluffy you just as much wanna lay on it as eat it. But it was always the spinach that got me “so green it’s black” she said.

Mama said spinach gives you strong teeth and long hair but it gives you back that myrtle too. She said we used to be green. That we was so rich with the life of the forest, the plains, the mountains, the sea that we was green like midnight; but they was color blind and to them the deep forest hue of our skin was black, so that’s what they called us. And she told us how they took all the black folks and squeezed us out to make money, and that's why money looks like ferns and evergreens.

When I was tall I’d battled some rainbow trout, wrestled some blue tailed lobster, and even tangoed with a portuguese man o’ war (and not the jellyfish). Now I’m small but that quiche never bubbled up outta that brine and never blessed me with that warm stringy cheese. And on those thick nights when I lie between the splinters, on these old docks, I can smell ‘em bakin’ in those deep coal ovens. And if god is good, when i lay down, there’s a quiche in it.