Yellow Dog Café

By Yusef Komunyakaa b. 1947 Yusef Komunyakaa

In a cerulean ruckus

Of quilts, we played house

Off the big room where

They laughed & slowdragged

Weekends. The eagle flies

On Friday. The jukebox pulsed

A rainbow through the papery walls.

We were paid a dollar to guard

Each other. I was eight

& S. C. Mae fourteen,

As we experimented with

The devil. Mill workers

Changed money in the briny

Glow of bootleg, overpowered

By the smell of collards, catfish

& candied yams. Granddaddy Gabriel

Worked the cash register

Beside his second wife, Rosie

Belle. I heard my mother

& father laugh like swimmers

Underwater. A raw odor

Of lilies & sweat filled the room;

My cousin’s hands moved over me

Smooth & tough as a blues guitar.

Somebody swore they saw

A silhouette with a gasoline can

The night S. C. Mae ran away

With a woman’s husband.

For weeks they sifted ashes

But the gutted studs & braces

Only leaned against the wind,

Weak as a boy & girl entwined

On the floor. That June

Granddaddy drove a busload

Up north: the growers paid him

A dollar a day for each pair of hands.

He wanted to rebuild those nights,

Their circle of blurred cards.

The bus grunted between orchards,

& by late August I had enough

Fire-blackened nickels & dimes

To fill a sock, but only a few pickers

Came back after a season of wine-stained

Greenbacks sewn inside coats

& taped to the soles of their feet.

Source: Pleasure Dome: New and Collected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2001)

Biography

In his poetry, Yusef Komunyakaa weaves together the elements of his own life in short lines of vernacular to create complex images of life in his native Louisiana and the jungles of Vietnam. From his humble beginnings as the son of a carpenter, Komunyakaa has traveled far to become a scholar, professor, and prize-winning poet. In 1994, he claimed the Pulitzer Prize and the $50,000 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award for his Neon . . .

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