Two Poems by Junious Ward
/Virginia Health Bulletin, Extra No. 2
Blessings
my black family reunion is jealous my white family reunion is jealous
they are covetous of each other’s things
My mom’s folks use two picnic tables while the other reunion requires a resort
one is intimate and one is swollen
this one; we all here despite the odds that one; more kin than you ever seen
attendance percentage v. actual numbers
but jealousy peeks through when over a busy, packed-calendar summer
my kids can only tamp down a suitcase for one
they don’t get to see parts of themselves where are the jokes, the cousins
they missed growing up
driven by instinct, I react as mediator playing dozens or spades at the picnic
praying over fish-fry hushpuppies
praying over burgers and dogs what we remind ourselves of is this:
it is important to give thanks for
everything that seems a given every member able to torque a schedule
the meal that brings us together and
fills our spirit like heaping plates, leads us outweighs envy, no one eats until the prayer
confirms how one we are
Author’s Note: As the product of a southern interracial marriage, I am always keenly interested in the prevailing thoughts and attitudes that were either prevalent when my parents began courting or had been heavily influenced by things like the Racial Integrity Act or this Health Bulletin that announced it. Erasure gives me a way to talk back, to subvert the conversation, to create a contrapuntal where the document is altered by both black space and white space. There is also room, particularly in the footnotes, to contemplate [dominant race]ness—what it means, how it’s viewed, and (for lack of a better term) how it is policed.
My family has two family reunions each year, my dad's side and my mom's side. I wrote the first draft of this poem after a particularly busy summer where my kids could only attend one of the family reunions due to scheduling conflicts. A conversation with them reminded me of how differently they experience these two events, even though they love both reunions. In subsequent edits it seemed natural for the poem to be a contrapuntal, where there was a natural friction and various perspectives that ultimately rejoin to one conclusion—gratitude for family. Oneness.
Junious Ward is a poet living in Charlotte, NC, and author of Sing Me A Lesser Wound (Bull City Press). Junious has attended and/or received support from: Breadloaf Writers Conference, Callaloo, The Frost Place, and The Watering Hole. His poems have appeared or are upcoming in Four Way Review, Columbia Journal, DIAGRAM, The Amistad, Diode Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.
