By Jack Joseph Smith
Original Scan
AI Interpretation
A maternal poem about labor, absence, speech, and local pride, ending in a plainspoken measure of love.
A plainspoken poem of single motherhood that opens with a near-apology - 'I only got two kids / most have more' - introduces a girl and boy 'three and one' whose absent father 'was not here for either,' and finds quiet pride in their future: they will be 'very smart' because she works 'while they fuss' and 'my aint / reads to them.' It ends in the holler picking 'rubarb,' which she loves 'just about / as much as him.'
The voice is defensive and proud in equal measure, measuring herself against neighbors ('most have more') and against the man who 'was not here for either' birth, then converting hardship into hope. The children mirror the parents - 'Girl and guy / just like me and him' - so the abandoned family still carries the shape of the couple that made it. Her confidence about their intelligence is rooted in plain labor and care: she goes to work, the aunt reads aloud, and she adds the small, telling boast 'I pronounce it right,' a claim of correctness and dignity from someone the world might assume speaks wrong - the literacy she is anxious to pass on. The closing image is the poem's heart: walking the holler 'picking rubarb,' a tart, homely crop she loves 'just about / as much as him,' which holds love for the absent man and love for the land in the same wry, qualified breath - he gets compared to a vegetable, and the rhubarb nearly wins. The spellings 'aint' (aunt) and 'rubarb' are the source's and I have preserved them.