Jill Returns to Cameron

by Jake Strautmann

Each Spring they hold a crawdad festival—
the tents painted red and full of steam.
The older women teach nieces and daughters
to mind the boiling pots with foot-long spoons.
The basil and bean broth simmers. They wait
wiping their faces with handkerchiefs.
The men hike back from cold crick run-offs
up to their elbows and knees in mud, the bags
of burlap wriggling and pinching until they’re emptied.
    Drop the basil now.
    Bring the carrots up to breathe.

After the banquet they vote by throwing shells
on an old-fashioned scale, so they can crown
this Spring’s Crawdad King and Queen.
Crick water escapes through the slats of the tents,
beneath their eaves, at each mooring stake
and hand-laced corner—it escapes them,
their songs cut short in fits
of coughing, laughter and half-verses.
The tents fill again with hissing steam, and they sing.
    I think I like it here.
    I’ll get along fine.

 

Jake Strautmann is managing director of the Boston Playwrights’ Theatre and a poet and playwright. His poems have been published in Perihelion on Web Del Sol, and two of his one-act plays have been featured in the Boston Theater Marathon. His one-act play Roseby’s Rock was recently produced by the Bridge Theatre Company in Boston. He is originally from West Virginia and is a graduate of the Boston University Creative Writing Program.