CANDIED YAM CASSEROLE
Or How to Honor Thy Mother

1. Cleave the potatoes’ summery rind, then cube
   them till the roots forget an earth once whet against it,
   small enough that the tuber’s flame could’ve been anything:
   a carrot, or a cardinal leaned obedient beneath the blade.
   
2. Blister then mash (your tongue
   against your mastered teeth. When Momma fell behind
   on the wash, you’d do it, knew to
   route the sopping rags through the ringer to dry—.)
   
3. Pack in butter, sugar, and spice—
   like Momma packed the washroom with violets,
   gardenia gutted from the garden, bees
   on the leathery leaves obedient
   to a single queen—
   
4. Fold like eggs Fold in eggs then empty
   the mix in a well-greased dish
   
5. Bake until a thick crust scars
   the top (of your finger:
   caught in the mangle—a machine
   that could debone a pinky until it could be anything:
   a carrot, a cardinal and its deep-red throat—)
   
6. Bully the butter into sugar, flour, crumble
   in pecans from the yard tree
   you couldn’t climb after Momma told you
   she couldn’t afford the hospital. Remember
   the sickle edge in her stare while you stir—
   
   the sheets, your finger slipping into the lethal
   mangle’s maw, its rollers feeding
   on your pinky till it flourished
   
   like a flush-faced zinnia, your sister
   who heard you screaming, pulled the mangle’s cord
   from the socket in the blood-daubed wall,
   & you balled, bawled on the floor
   
   till Momma returned, then knew to tuck
   your pinky into the pocket of your mangled hand, reassured her
   you would finish what you started—this recipe,
   the one thing owned
   in a body that was never really yours.