Summertime on Mama Bell’s back stoop,
it always started with someone saying,
“Your mama don’t wear no drawers”—
school kids playing the dozens—
and we’d fall over laughing, pretending
to look up some lady’s skirt, until
a boy would say, “Well, your mama
wear combat boots to church.”
And we’d march around the yard
like soldiers firing into the air.
Trying to out-jank the boys,
I jump up yelling, “Your mama
breath smell like week-old cabbage.”
And Mama Bell appears, at first a shadow
on the screen door. “Come on in here,”
she says, pulling me in. “You have
the rest of your life to learn that game.”
—Natasha Trethewey
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