Poem by doris diosa davenport

weeny (wiener) soup
(a meditation on enrichment in impoverishment & systemic “food insecurity” in the Deep South, USA)

Dolores, my sister, and me, one day got to talking
about weeny soup on the phone her mouth
watered about the same time as mine, “Keep this up,
I‘ll go make me some,” she said, taking words
& taste out of my mouth (both vegetarians by then)

a few dyed dark-red weenies, canned tomatoes,
water, salt & pepper, our food-magician momma
cut up weenies in small chunks dumped in a
big pot of water (onions if she had them)
simmered slowly til the smell made you
hungry; like the thought makes me, right now.

No, i don’t reckon our Uncle Jack feels the same
about salt & pepper sandwiches on white
bread but he ate a sandwich like that,
one time, with us, on Collins Street, did, and smacked

his lips just like it was a git-down pig ear sandwich
(with hotsauce & mayonnaise) but i still hate pinto beans.
Not Cousin Jimmy. He loved ‘em then, he loves them now, and
he will invite you to have some
just as happy and proud - like, since he loves pinto beans,
he knows you do. Not me. Just

the words make my stomach cramp ever since that day after school,
when i got home ahead of everybody & ate the whole pot. Yeah, i
got sick. (Don’t get stupid on me.)
You’d get sick too if you ate that many beans
at once. Just the thought and i get sick,
even now. (i’m getting sick now.)

No. Naw. Give me weeny soup,
any day and if i can’t get that,
some pig feet will do.

doris diosa davenport (pronouns: person/per) is a visionary 73 year old African American lesbian-
feminist; independent scholar and literary & performance poet, born and raised in Cherokee Homelands (colonized by Europeans as Northeast GA). doris has published 12 books of poetry, most recently, dancing in time: poetry, monologue, stories, lies (2019). Per is the 2022 recipient of the Lillian E. Smith Writer-in-Residence Award (Piedmont University).

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