The Fortunate Spill
Note: Traditionally, black-eyed peas are served on New Year's Eve: each black-eyed pea one eats brings good luck.
Well! Johnnie thinks. He has his nerve!
Crashing this party! What a stuck-up conceit!
Passing his induction papers around;
another Negro whose feet never touch the ground.
His name is Melvin Nelson. In his eyes
the black of dreams sparkles with laughing stars.
Johnnie agrees to play. And it defies
all explanation: she forgets five bars!
This cocky, handsome boy? she asks her heart.
For good luck all year, Melvin says, you've got to fart.
They eat elbow to elbow, in a crowd
of 1942's gifted black youth.
His tipsy bass-clef voice is much too loud.
Hers trebles nervously: to tell the truth;
she's impressed.
I'll be a man up in the sky,
he confides. She blurts out, Hello Jesus! And they die
with laughter.
But the joke catches him off-guard:
he spills the black-eyed peas into her lap.
Oh Lord, he mumbles, be she laughs so hard
both recognize the luck of their mishap.
And I watch from this distant balcony
as they fall for each other, and for me.
written by Marilyn Nelson, The Homeplace, 1989.
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