There is a place in my throat
for when the coffee has turned cold
    for when the beans are reclaiming their shape
     and, like freed men,   begin to search out their broken kin
   like fools think it will be in Heaven
    and that somehow there will be a mist of Grandma
      holding a pan of warm bread or a bowl of second slain beast stew

   And my swallowing  is stopped at the tongue
       and I make a bowl to cradle the lacking brew
    and I can see my Grandfather’s thin lips blowing over his saucer
          of poured out   percolated   early morning   liquor
   that still wafts and wakes  the most loved place of my entire known life
   until it calms into a mellow potion  for my brother and I to fight over

       I beg my tongue to river that swallow into my throat
    like I begged my Grandfather  not to leave
            and go over the hill  where he broke open the earth
       where other men died  and were swallowed by the dirt
where one man watched a Birmingham Steel girder slice his head apart
       where White men claimed  splendor they did not put hands to

      Begged him to stay at that morning table
          where we fell asleep scrapping at his leftover grits   dry toast and runny eggs
    begged him to pick me to wear his scuffed and scraped hard hat
             that swallowed our tiny, boy heads
       and gave us echoes of his foot falls across wood floors
           and reverberations of the swooshing air thru the opening door
      and washed our blindedness with a screech of the screens hinges
            before being taken off and tossed into the station wagon

       And I tilt back my head
   like I did as a boy    and wait for the whiskered kiss
      of my Grandfather’s cooled breath
   to push the last of this morning’s brew into my remembered
                unaged soul

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Jas Mardis is a 2014 inductee to The Texas Literary Hall of Fame and a leather and fabric artist