Moonshine

By Yusef Komunyakaa b. 1947 Yusef Komunyakaa

Drunken laughter escapes

Behind the fence woven

With honeysuckle, up to where

I stand. Daddy’s running-buddy,

Carson, is beside him. In the time

It takes to turn & watch a woman

Tiptoe & pull a sheer blouse off

The clothesline, to see her sun-lit

Dress ride up peasant legs

Like the last image of mercy, three

Are drinking from the Mason jar.

That’s the oak we planted

The day before I left town,

As if father & son

Needed staking down to earth.

If anything could now plumb

Distance, that tree comes close,

Recounting lost friends

As they turn into mist.

The woman stands in a kitchen

Folding a man’s trousers—

Her chin tucked to hold

The cuffs straight.

I’m lonely as those storytellers

In my father’s backyard

I shall join soon. Alone

As they are, tilting back heads

To let the burning ease down.

The names of women melt

In their mouths like hot mints,

As if we didn’t know Old Man Pagget’s

Stoopdown is doctored with

Slivers of Red Devil Lye.

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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