Granny, with Pica [Alabama, 1843, Moseley Estate]
by Rachel Nelson

The dirt smells good enough to eat. Like skin, 
the soil swallows

the scent of turnips, onions, greens 
torn by hand. It digests

the imprint of dog’s paws, the teeth
of the gecko once shed, skulls of frogs shattered

for their medicine 
into new dirt, an ever-expanding country 

underground. When no one is looking she steals 
clumps of clay and they radiate 

salt pork, good cool water,
cured bacon, and the skillet. The body

has an answer for every trauma.
Not always a good one. She stays alive

if each baby, slave
or free, thrives in its mother’s arms. 

In return she feeds the dirt 
the bones of rabbits, discarded 

leaves from berries, prayers to her mother 
planted like seeds. The soil 

sponges up chamomile, soaks
up those fragrant white leaves. She whispers 

hopes to the dead 
that the babies will not arrive ashen –

quiet as a solitary doe standing on a hill,
their lives already darted away. 

She feeds the ground placenta 
still dark red and warm, the skinny brown arms

of cotton plants. Why shouldn’t she eat it
in turn? Sifted by spiders, ants, hand-held hoes, 

the smell of dirt rises up. She eats 
its brown loaf, its dark leavening. Our wasted blood

turned soft mud. The clay settles 
between her teeth with its whisper

of salt and she is full. She hears old voices
in new bones. They grit the back of her throat,

brown, thick as molasses, richly dark
as water at night. She prepares

breakfast for the house, carries trays
of eggs, jam, tea to missus. Her meal

waits under her nails, black
crescent moons, waxing.

​

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Rachel Nelson is a Cave Canem fellow and a graduate of the University of Michigan’s MFA program, where she won a Hopwood prize for playwriting. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in the museum of americana, Pleiades, Radar Poetry, Thrush, and elsewhere. She lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.