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
Jas Mardis is a 2014 inductee to The Texas Literary Hall of Fame and a leather and fabric artist
Negroes eating ice cream in front of hardware store Farm Security Administration Archive Lee Russell
On the phone my Uncle EJ is recovering from a coughing fit and I am confused when it morphs into a rasping laugh and his signature, “Ooooh, boy“, then, “Jr. you’d be surprised at how little distance there was back in those times between a man being your Daddy or your Uncle!” Again, he laughs so heartily that he has to fight off another fit of coughing, but eventually settles himself down. Another, “Oooooh, boy” follows and I wait patiently for him to explain.
On this call we have been talking about my failure to find the marriage license for my parents in the Union Parish Records Archive. I’ve been at this task for years and am calling him from a Motel room in Bueno Vista, Arkansas. “James Jr, you are not going to find that record anywhere in Arkansas because your Father had run out of Arkansas marriages. He come and got my ‘57 Chevy and ran Route 63 to that big Bridge right into Mississippi and Greenwood to get hitched.” I look down at the cell phone and imagine a hot rod chase with multiple grandpappy’s wielding shotguns and tossing empty moonshine bottles out of car windows. They’re probably yelling, “Git back here!”…Again, my Uncle’s, “Ooooh, boy!” coughing and laughing fit brings me back to the present. I interject, “WHAT?!” “Unc, how do you run out of Arkansas Marriages?“
Those days, with my Uncle EJ leaning hard into his 89th year of life and no longer able to travel back home for the yearly grave cleaning and family events, my calls to his San Francisco, California home meant everything to us both. I have been recording these talks because of their tendency to go off the hinges. “James Jr, the Clerk of Courts wouldn’t write a new Marriage Bond to my Brother because he was officially still under his previous one!” …and there is a burst of energetic guffaw so strong that I don’t need the phone to hear it. The speaker distorts and crackles with the waves of exploding cackling and I wonder if I should offer to call him back later. There are a series of exclamations that include, “Oh Lord”, “Jesus” and various versions of “Son of a GUN”, along with the surprised calling of my Father’s first wife’s name, “Stella Mae”.
The pen that I have been scribbling notes with is now snapped and pouring a river of blue ink onto the notebook and surface of the Motel table. “Your Father and Stella Mae had run off from one another and that marriage about a year after getting hitched. Her Mother had signed off on it.” He ignores my question and continues, “That’s about the same time I met your Aunt Mary up at that lil club shack and was running back and forth trying to catch her again.” Again, he ignores my question and I start to wonder if I am talking or just thinking inside my head about what to ask. I catch the phrase, “Ooooh, boy, she was some kinda gal...” and this time I stop him with my actual voice, “WAIT! Who was “some kinda gal”? and he stops the memory, saying, “Who?“. Now, we both are confused.
“Jr. I’m talking about Rosel, now. We had come up to Camden and was running around on a Saturday night. I come up on a little ol’ thang who told me she was Mary’s older Sister, then she asked why was I out here calling her Sister’s name in the street like a dog?” “Ohhh, boy. I was standing about three feet over that lil gal and she had her fist cocked back when she come up to me”. In the Motel, I check the cassette tape for time remaining and hold on for the ride. I just went from not finding a marriage license to an unresolved separation, court clerks, an unpaid bond, my Aunt and Mother “in dem streets” and my 6’4″ Uncle about to get punched out by someone three feet shorter, but ready.
He picks up again, “Pay attention, James Chris. Yo Mother, well, she was still just a girl then, run me back up the road about asking around for her sister.”, He coughs, then continues, “An’ just before she lets loose on me…up comes J.C.!” I ask, feeling lost in the night’s events some forty years later, “From Where?!”We both laugh thru the speaker phone.
“J.C. had rode with me up to Camden and was having a pretty good time.” Uncle EJ calms down but there is a lifting in his voice. I ask, “So, they met because he had to save you in a juke joint from an angry midget?” and the phone again erupts from our guffaws. I follow up with, “Wait, where was Stella Mae?” and he snorts, “Most likely with her new fella back up the road in ElDorado!” When I remember to check the cassette recorder it was stopped, so I turned it over and tried to continue. My Uncle is a laughing mess on the phone and there is somebody knocking at his apartment door. Listening to digitized recording now I hear a woman’s voice say that she wants in “on this laugh party you are having“. On the phone my Uncle quickly wraps up the story by saying, “Well, James Jr, you can probably figure out the rest.” I ask, “So, did you and Aunt Mary ever get back around to each other?” and Uncle EJ responds, “Ohhh, boy. The next time I saw ol’ Mary was when Granny LaFears delivered my first niece about a year later. I gotta run, James Jr. See ya in the funny papers.“
The next day at the Archives I easily found the Marriage License for my Father and Stella Mae Coldure. On the license is permission granted by her Mother for the 16 year old to marry my 19 year old father. In the digitized archive is another surprise marriage record. I call my Uncle EJ early in the afternoon and when he answers I say, “So, who exactly is, Miss Tandy Oscar?” He holds the line for a few seconds then retorts, “Ooooh, boy, James Jr…seems like I’ve lost some memories since last we spoke...”
“You’ll never forget the sound of a happy elephant, Junior” is the way that Uncle Heavy started telling me about one of the craziest ways that segregation benefitted the Negroes of Three Creeks, Arkansas in the 1930’s. “Blacks couldn’t attend the festivities when the Fall Harvest brought people and the people who liked people’s money, to town”. In those years Uncle E.J. earned the nickname, “Heavy” because he was a thick boy and “stretched 6 feet and four inches above the ground”, as Grandpa Herman would say. He was the eldest of the Mardis 8, but had an older brother, Levi, who taught him nearly everything he knew about farming and following. One of those lessons was “Seeing what they don’t want you to see: Yourself getting out of here!”
“Seeing what they don’t want you to see: Yourself getting out of here!”
“Junior”, Uncle Heavy pitched his resonant baritone voice across the front seat of my red Cadillac and made a patting motion. His huge palm was stuck on the end of a ham shaped forearm sticking out of the shirt’s cuff folded up to his elbow. I was twenty-six that year and drove my Uncle around his old town listening to these remembrances. The patting palm meant to slow down and anticipate a sudden turn off the main dirt road. Nearly every time that road led into a small lane that would open up into a clearing with shack-like houses or barns. I slowed and watched for the rare truck that might be coming along behind.
His way of giving direction was to make a “humpf” sound just ahead of a turning in spot. Uncle Heavy…humpfed and stabbed his meaty finger toward an indentation to the right of the road. “Careful now! Ol’ Henry Leland didn’t know about dipping into Jimmy Jolly’s Crossing when he built this Caddy”, and he laughed a sonorous bellow that always reminded me of a donkey’s bray. I turned.
Sixty bumping feet after that turn and thru a whip of small tree switches there was an opening. A few feet further and a lake, rimmed by huge white boulders, appeared. A ragged line of about twelve fishermen with cane poles leaned against a cooler were cast into the lake. In Arkansas, you wave and give a holler. In unison the men threw their hands into the air and welcomed the bouncing red Cadillac into Three Creeks-Union Arc-Junction City, Arkansas. Uncle Heavy pointed to a spot of grass and I parked in the shade of half-dead oak tree. One of the older men squinted and yelled out, “Eurman?, Well, I’ll jus’ be damned!” We climbed out as all of the men approached with big grins.
I was introduced to my great-great-cousin, “Tumor” or Mr. Reverend Percy. According to Uncle E.J., in his formative years learning the Gospel Mr. Percy was practiced his preaching on mules in the field. He looked at me for a few seconds and declared, “Hell, son…wit dem shoe-sized ears you ain’t nobody’s boy if yo Daddy ain’t J.C.!” “Whatchusay?” another man witnessed and a few others asked, “Son, I knowed yo Mama, Miss Rose, all thru school. How’s yo Aunt Malveis doing up in Dallas? You got Mr. Herman’s taste for cars and Miss Adla’s bug eyes!” And just like that my whole genealogy spilled out on the ground.
Even at twenty-six, once a group of thirteen old men start up you might as well be a four-year old. They laughed at half told stories and recalled entire lives within minutes of coming together. One pole whipped into a half moon with a fish on the line and we moved the crowd to watch the catch. It was a large channel catfish, about eleven pounds once the “cousin” called Ben-Roy brought it on to the bank. Staring at that incredible catch caused Uncle Heavy to ask Tumor if he remembered “the elephants from the Circus?” That question caused all of the men to grin broadly as they each had a remembrance or family folklore to repeat about seeing exotic animals right outside their homes every day for almost two weeks.
Turning to me, Tumor’s face was sullen but quickly turning into a mischief. “The Whites wouldn’t let us in the Circus, J.C. Jr.” He assumed correctly that I was called after my Father. “I mean they had a man standing at the Circus field with a two-barrel scat gun ‘cross his ches’”, and Tumor stood erect with a stern look on his face. Another man chimed in, “Us kids had a fit about dat and a few folks got the switch took ‘em to shut up about it”. Tumor picked up the story, “But GOD had different plans about it all!” The group of men laughed and slapped one another on the shoulder. “On about the third day after the start up of thangs we was up and in the field”, Tumor turned to his right and wiped his hand in the air toward the vast fields. “…an’ son, let me tell you this. I figured Gabriel had commenced to blowing the final horn of glory when dem elephants run into this creek and blowed their noses that very mornin’!” Uncle Heavy picked up the story with a big laugh, “Yo Granny come up from way over yonder”, his big paw stabbed the area where a line of trees now stood, “Her hoe was up and she was a runnin’! Most of the kids was in the field, but yo Daddy was still a lil’ boy and was in the house with Miss Verta Mae watching over him.“ He wiped his eyes at the memory and the spectacle of her running and seeing the growing crowd of animals.
Tumor laughed too at the remembrance and the reactions of the boys, girls and mostly women to the Circus animals being brought to their creek. He recalled, “Not much got done for a while with errbody stealing away to see what they had been refused jus’ days ago”. The men agreed that after thinking about it there were just a few elephants and two giraffes brought down to the creek, but for them it might as well have been tigers, bears and the bearded fat lady, too. Most of the men were off to other jobs in the area and missed the excitement. “Had it not been for the stacks of poop dropped along the road my Daddy woulda called me a liar!”, Tumor laughed and added, “Heavy,do you remembers how ol’ man, W.C. sent his boys down here to the creek tryna keep us from stealin’ one of dem elephants?” and the men bent over in laughter.
I’m returning to fabric focused Art after a year’s long attention to learning leather bag crafting. It was fruitful and expensive and resulted in me settling on a series of Monocular Cases. You can find the final few available for purchase with two styles of Monocular
African Cave Drawing and Appliqué African Cave Drawing and Cameroon Coin Iconography on Designer Leather
I’m returning to Quilt and Fabrij
Portrait on Cotton Creating new fabric for Quilt work“Sons of Her Thunder: Not Another Boy Harmed” fabric printing, with Adinkra “energy” symbol, thread and raffia painting on raw edge cotton foundation “Nobody Told Me The Road Would Be Easy” printed fabric, leather pyrography portrait, African iconography, bone buttons and wood hanger with song lyric “Where From Here?”?leather pyrography drawing on piecework quilting with custom wood hanging system “My Father’s Rivers” leather pyrography portrait on created fabric with folded fabric on a custom wood and epoxy resin hanging system
Sometimes…the Leather Wins🤦🏽♂️. I don’t need another satchel, but there was this blue-green designer leather with a pearlescent undertone. I cut a piece to make the last two monocular cases…and the leather touched me like a loose woman💃🏾💃🏾💃🏾🌚💦🍑! Three hours later I’ve nearly finished the new bag!… 12 cases/pouches with monoculars drop on Wednesday #mardisart940 #leather #jasmardisdotcom #birdwatchingnewbie
Literally— Come Check ME Out — Saturday, September 10, 2022 My “Human-Book” is titled: “Grasshopper Pie”. How it works: Learn More about this program: click the graphic
The Dallas Public Library invites you to check out a person instead of a book!
Welcome to the library of people! Instead of borrowing a book, indulge in the experience of checking out a person. Challenge stereotypes and prejudices through dialogue.
The Human Library allows people to come together in an informal, one on one setting, to have comfortable dialogue about often uncomfortable topics. Our human books are drawn from fascinating members of our communities who have fascinating stories that you MUST hear.
How it works: Come in during the hours of 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. and spend 20 minutes reading the following “books” (to be announced). Have a conversation, ask questions, stay open and learn.
The goal is to publish people as open books and to challenge stereotypes and prejudices through dialogue.
I suppose that it is time for such a thing to happen. The world has not completely stopped, just taken a sabbatical during the pandemic and virus recovery attempts. Along the way a lot of people have perished. Many of them from the virus and many others in the normal course of life’s medical tragedies that seem suddenly less than immediate, but just as certain as, well, taxes.
I am in the vein of reality where mortality is upon me in a way that brings it all truly home. My spirit demands a sudden accounting of things as I read of the death of a former lover. Approaching my sixtieth birthday in July, an age that my Father did not reach successfully, I am pondering the absence of a woman with whom I once lay generously and passionately for hours and days without beginning or end. Her smile and warmth and coming alongside me in general conversations of daily being and faith explorations gave me a toe hold on the person that I am today. We once turned the morning into awakening with ravenous hungers and physical bonding before surrendering to the start of day. Even now, her body long gone from me; married and surrendering to a spouse; she gives me pleasure and expectation, as I page thru the mornings with others.
Gone. Dead. Passed. Deceased. Succumbed.
She called me not long before her death and asked if I still wanted a particular thing that we once found in a resale shop. It was right there; in her hand; rusted and seized up, as useless as the one we found over fifteen years ago on a lunch side trip. Next to the BBQ place, across a slanted parking lot with a slow-cranking, red and white sign and $30 box springs out front, the wide store windows burped with metal shelves and promise. We left the foil-wrapped food on the car seat and browsed for what she called, “another man’s trash”. Two aisles into our browsing she yelled out to me, “Got IT!” and ran to me with a Smith-Corona manual typewriter. “Fix it up and write me poetry. All for the low-low price of $10 …and rust dust on both our clothes and the back seat of my car.
Later that day, with the office abuzz with some manner of team building, maybe a baby or wedding shower that overtook the conference room, she called me with a request. “Can you come to my office? Well, actually. Can you meet me in the stairwell while this party is going on?” I headed straight over and rode the elevator up to the floor below her office and entered the stairwell for the meet up. She asked if I had written anything yet on the seized up device from lunch. “Nope”. She lifted her navy and white polka-dotted dress and I read, MUSE, written in White-Out on her thighs.
That’s where we found ourselves frequently for much of the next year. Getting caught by stair runners and pretending to share a quick smoke, before the days of twenty-five feet from the building entrance smoking areas. Soon enough the novelty of sneaking off ran its course and our lives succumbed to other relationships and marriages and our growing kids from previous relationships. But, still, she called, all those years later with a familiar tone across the phone lines. “I found another one. You want it? I can send it to you…or you can come get it (laugh). She wasn’t close. Our kids were making kids. That office building has long since started securing the stairwell with digital codes. I couldn’t take off in the middle of the day. I held onto the MUSE through numerous relationships. There were years to add to that story.
Social Media came around and phones changed into cameras and messages could be secreted to anyone at anytime. In the middle of the night I received her breasts and a recording about how much they would be missed. “But, you can remember them like this”. A little while later, months later, she asked for my body’s picture. Later still, she asked if I remembered the White Out; unlit cigarettes and the guy who watched from the next floor up.
In the mail one weekend was a manilla envelope. Inside a sandwich bag was littered with slivers and squares of nylon, silk and cotton fabric that had been sprayed with perfume and had a Victoria’s Secret tag taped to the outside. No return address needed. There were twenty-two pieces: it had been twenty-two years since we last touched. I did not reach back to confirm or celebrate or figure out a flight to nowhere. I put the whole thing in my side table and waited out the unavoidable.
I really do hate Social Media and the insensitive nature of calling out the dead. Memorials of life started populating my timeline within the next few weeks. I guess nobody knows that you are leaving behind lovers when laying hold of your image and videos of your voice…laughter…wedding…graying into a sexy grandma. There is no reason to consider who kissed the dead or found them in delight…read their thighs…felt their breath and bite and exhale.
The ways of the World do not consider your becoming years or fathom a guess at the worth and waning melody of finding yourself suddenly mortal. Unlike a parent or relative; elderly or neighborhood or College roommate’s passing, the first time you lose a lover is a sobering affair. Your bodies are forever linked with shared muscle and fluid exchanges. There is grace and homecoming ending forevermore. And, there is an upturned calendar, hourglass and ticking…ticking…and time running toward you, now. Suddenly, it is possible that you, too, could breathe no more into the memory of someone special.
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.Jas Mardis is a 2014 Texas Literary Hall of Fame inductee and a Fabric and Pyrography Artist .
May 2021 I return to the display case of the Main Lewisville Library. I’m displaying laser enhanced designs and hand pyrography items with small quilts and the new wood hangers and candleholders. The laser engraving machine is part of the Library’s HIVE MAKERS SPACE. I was introduced to the progressive creative space during my 2019 Library case exhibition and enjoy the knowledge and skills of the HIVE staffers.
Jas Mardis: Hand & Laser Pyrography and Portraits runs May 1-29, 2021. Mask up and see the work, then tour THE HIVE. #LPLthehive Tell them I sent you!
11″ x 17″ color prints on acid-free Fine Art Paper are $200 per item, s/h included in the price within the United States using Ground Postal rates. Expedited FedEx shipping will be quoted.
If the PayPal button does not appear on this page please email me your request at MardisArt940@gmail.com and you will receive an invoice via email.
“Yal Royalty” is available on 11″x17″ acid-free coated German Etching Fine Art Paper.
Jas Mardis 