Daddy Registered Republican in 1931,
but I learned about politics the year Mother called Mamie Eisenhower a frump.“ The papers can say whatever they want,” she said,“ but those silly bangs and her stupid hat don’ t do it for me.”( She said this as she crushed my shoulders between her knees, hot-combing my kinky school- girl bangs.)“ Didn’ t her husband have an affair during the war?” I took it as a sign that Republicans should not be living in the White House.
At first, Daddy, immersed in the copy of Life magazine I’ d seen him linger over more than once in the last six months, didn’ t respond. On its cover, a snapshot of the first Negro woman ever to appear there— Dorothy Dandridge— one bronze shoulder exposed, a red rose high-lighting her hair, a smile that made men.“ I agree,” was Daddy’ s peculiar reply,“ Dorothy is one god-damned fine-looking woman.”
© 2017 Lynne Thompson
My Life According to Brenda M. Osbey
Made of dry rot and tenpenny nails pressing roots of ginger underfoot on my daddy’ s land
My grandmother dead and buried flowers on the altars cinnamon out the back door
I could tell you they died one after the other and a longer time no one will speak of
I sit on my front porch into the night The night a bastard gleaming
© 2017 Lynne Thompson
24 african Voices