This month, we are serving up a poetry potluck, an idea shared by Tanita, since we didn't have a plan for May. Sara then chimed in and suggested we each pick a potluck dish or food item to write about. Once this was decided, there was only one thing I wanted to write about, because it is the first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word potluck.
My mom loved a good potluck. The dish she made nearly every week for years was due to her participation in what she called the "funeral brigade" at our church. I don't recall the official name of the group, but she and other women in the parish cooked an enormous amount of food, set tables, and received families in mourning after a funeral. Mom's funeral potatoes are my contribution to this month's challenge. I'm also including an old photo of us in the kitchen, clearly singing to my brother on his birthday. This was the room where all the good stuff happened.
Every Tuesday morning
my mother assembled comfort
in the form of a casserole—
frozen hash browns,
sour cream,
a can of soup,
corn flake topping.
The recipe never changed.
She carried the dish
into the church kitchen
where women spoke in lowered voices
and folded sorrow into paper napkins.
Someone's husband.
Someone's sister.
Someone's child.
The potatoes baked
while sympathy rose and settled
like steam on the windows.
I did not understand then
how much grief weighs.
Not the coffin,
not the flowers,
not the clothes of black.
A casserole dish
warm against your palms.
A recipe memorized
because mourning is always arriving
at someone else's door.
My mother lifted that weight
week after week.
She fed people
who could not swallow their sadness,
who stood in the fellowship hall
holding paper plates
and the impossible fact
of an empty chair.
Now when I smell butter
browning at the edges,
I think of all the grief
she carried home unnoticed—
the names she never spoke,
the tears she never claimed as hers,
and how love sometimes looks like
shredded potatoes and cheese,
heavy enough
to feed a crowd,
light enough
to offer with both hands.
- Tanita Davis
- Mary Lee Hahn
- Sara Lewis Holmes
- Laura Purdie Salas
- Liz Garton Scanlon
