Saturday Service

by Nicholas Molbert

In this town, the stomped paths shoot off of
shelled roads & chase receding coastlines,
the patched screen doors slap their frames in the wind,
the stilted houses crane over each other
& peer at the curved horizon as kids practice Grandma’s
number on the cigarette-stained rotary dial

Grandma scrubs Dixie cups for the morning’s orange juice,
over the diesel trucks, her Our Fathers hope for her children,
her children’s children, but her grandson is with the girl
at the end of Cocodrie Lane, making way for a fourth generation

On Saturday morning, like every other,
weathered fishermen trek to the bait shop for minnows,
when, returning back to camp,
they find teenaged sons on the carport bench pressing
PVC pipe with cement-filled buckets on each end,
infant daughters splashing as yesterday’s minnows
escape their tiny palms’ grabs in a plastic twelve gallon kiddie pool,
aproned wives in the kitchen conjuring up
sliced, pan-fired andouille &
over-easy eggs atop buttered Evangeline

Around midday, the town would have lost three quarters
of its population to the water,
chasers of the big one, the limit,
while others wait for their return.
Grandma’s known around town to say,
This town gon’ break off into the Gulf if nobody’s foot’s on land

Nicholas Molbert is a New Iberia, Louisiana, native. After graduating from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette with a degree in mathematics, he realized that his family camp in Cocodrie, Louisiana, could very well be swept into the Gulf by a hurricane. In an attempt at preservation, he’s started writing poems in the jabby, gentle voice of a preteen situated in the heart of the Gulf Coast’s Cajun fishing culture. His previous work can be found in Right Hand Pointing, Uut Poetry and Black Mirror Magazine.