Coming of Age

Do you remember an exact moment that defined your coming of age, your entry into the world of adulthood?  I’m not sure if I had only one moment.  This coming of age moment happened to a woman I know.  She’s in her early 70’s now, but it really hasn’t been that long ago. 

If you’ve ever been hungry, you can relate to the situation.  I don’t mean “gosh darn, all I’ve had to eat today is a Starbucks muffin on my way to the gym this morning and here it is four o’clock” hungry.  I mean true hunger. 

The poem is Old Ma’s story as much as it is the girl’s.  Old Ma might seem abusive to those of us who aren’t hungry.  But her world was a world of extreme poverty.  In trying to teach her granddaughter how to survive, she is expressing her love in the only way she knows how.

Thanks to The Panhandler for publishing this one years ago.

*************************************************************************************************************************** 

Killing Chickens

by Julie Buffaloe-Yoder   

 

Her thirteenth birthday,

Old Ma tied her to a pine.

Under summer day burnt clouds

behind a little bone lean house

beside the universe of faded clay

and a dust red barn, she watched

Old Ma kill chickens.

Old Ma, the Great One,

seven feet tall and seventy

had lived through many a chicken.

 

“You’re a woman now,” she said

to the pale, thin girl.

“You got to act like a woman,

strong and straight.

Don’t need no sleep.  No sweet.

No tender til you fall from the bone

in the grave.  No pinkened lace.

No flowers.  No honey blue eyes.

No sun unless it’s burning your back

in the wind skinny fields.

Today you’re hard booted and woman.

 

You’ll need calluses, guns, a back God strong.

An eyeful of black, a bagful of blue.

A noon day tongue drought bled and dry.

Big red knuckles and a mule kicked face.

You’ll need bad teeth that ache

til you can’t remember what ache ain’t.

Arms that turn floods into food,

hands that feed thirteen with two stale loaves.

Legs that walk ten shoeless uphill miles

on days when the creek’s gone clay.

 

You got to carry your man on your back

when he’s dirt hoe broke.

Bite on a board and cut off your toe

when it turns green from a rusty nail.

You got to shoot foaming dogs,

landowners, and grizzle toothed bears

who pick through your trash

for what ain’t never there.

You got to wrestle the angel of death

when he burns your babies with fever

ten mad red dawns in a row.

Win he wins, you box two off to the grave,

go home, nurse two more.

 

You’re a woman; you got to learn how to kill

without blinking a muscle.

You’re a woman; don’t you never never cry.

 

When autumn gnaws off all the leaves

and winter comes empty and whining,

you chop down trees to burn up the sneak

of window crack cold

midnight shoves sharp up your nose.

 

You got to always fix your own plate last.

When times are bad,

there ain’t no beans left

so you eat lard and bread

and drink pot liquor

til you’re drunk from the hungry

that’s made its nest in your gut.

When times are bad

there ain’t no shoes.

Wrap burlap straps around your feet

til they bleed sweet and brown

and thick in the snow.

When times are bad

you dog hang on a sagging porch.

In the drool of August

no sleep heat nights barking at your throat

trying to eat you up in one big thick lung gulp.

 

When times are good, you breathe.

When times are good, you sleep.

When times are good,

You Kill Chickens.”

 

Her thirteenth birthday,

tied to a pine

under summer day burnt clouds

and swollen, rusty skies.

Behind a little bone lean house

beside the universe of faded clay

and a dust red barn,

she became a woman.

Quick and sharp and silver hard

the rain began to fall.

Old Ma, the Great One,

seven feet tall and seventy,

warm wet feathers in her hair,

on her mule kicked face,

had lived through many a chicken

 

under headless, running skies

under broken, bleeding clouds

rolled in thunder

and fried.