MELISSA DICKSON
4 Sonnets From Cameo published in 2011 by New Plains Press


Bread Ration
            for John Lewis Camp and his brothers
            for my father and his brothers

Till I saw William, still as empty boots,
I took Chancellorsville grinning, day-dreaming
over Johnny cakes all the stories we’d tell:
how we bound ten Yankees, crying for home,
to Andersonville, and battled most the ache
for Mama’s Sunday bread. Then Bob shook
and stopped dead on the long road to Richmond.
And imprisoned beside me, David burned
to bone. For a year, I swallowed the memory
of my brothers with every crumb of Elmira
hard tack. Then I forded Susquehanna,
Appomattox, Chattahoochee, thinking
about our Mama and what bread she’ll break
when one of her four, jumps the creek back home.



On the Passing of Gourmet, November 2009

It is the last issue of our Gourmet.
Here on the rim of winter, on the cusp
of consumption, how dare we foray
into seasons of culinary lust
sans our guide, sans brioche, sans cassoulet,
merry in the face of our dying delight,
minus the clear broth charm, the recipes,
the bread and wine of our gastric flights?
Tell me, dear, what meaty balm, what mastic
can seal this plunging and hungry absence?
Here is the turkey on page eighty-five,
bronzed, glazed, a poultry hallowed and divine.
Must we greet the year in bitter chagrin,
lovers of pages that won’t roast again?


Yard Sale

Daddy said not to take less than forty
but I let it go for twenty-five. Cheap,
I know, but my kids want this swing for Christmas,
one of those cedar types they’ve got at Sam’s.
Daddy gave me a Brownie camera, and
a manual typewriter his Mama
used during the war, but this basket was
hardest to wrest from him. His daddy wove
it by firelight, a thousand bales rode
home in its hollow. Everybody wants
to know how I could sell it, but the truth
is, I don’t pick cotton, and I can’t think
of a reason I need to tote the chore
my grandfather set down sixty years ago.



Daughters of the Revolution


To claim a title, Anna phones to ask if I’ve finished
the family tree, if I remember the name
of General David Dickson’s son born 1763,
if I filed my D.A.R. application or even my U. D. of C.
and I say, No. Then, admit, chagrined, I don’t know
who can second a motion, or why our folks
joined the revolution only to abandon it in a new spin
on sovereignty, or what became of Mother
Nell's cameo, the cast iron commemoratives,
the tweed suit Grandmother wore to meetings.

But my boys are fine, and the Thai Chili Pepper plant
                                         has plumped with hot fruit and, yes,

Dad would laugh if he saw us now claiming
                                         The Revolution as though it were our own.