At Melrose Plantation
African House still stands
(restoration completed)
& murals by Clementine Hunter
(also restored)
show the juke joint
down the road
on Saturday night
maybe a knife fight
dance and swing
til shots ring
will silence the song
all the people gone
___________________
dVerse prompt to write a quadrille using the word juke. Louisiana artist Clementine Hunter painted a juke joint as part of her murals on the walls of African House.
A hundred years or more
Never going one hundred miles from home
Her art crossed her borders
Black Jesus on the Cross
oil on canvas board
Two black angels overhead
Feminine Black Jesus
Blood drips from the wrists
no hands
Blood drips down to the flowers
on either side
Blood drops in the garden
a character sketch
Forged in the art world
Is yours real?
Ahead of her time
Painted on anything
If you see one
What a find
Black grandmother Moses
Painting her scenes
of going to church
Baptism funeral and flowers
Plantation livin’
Her cotton pickin’ memories
Cotton Crucifixion
Bold statement for her time
A crucified black Lord Jesus
Hangin’ high
Between two cotton bales
That hold crosses of the thieves
Clementine saw the black Lord Jesus
The same one that rescued me
It was not another Jesus
bleedin’ on that tree
It was her Jesus
The one that she could see
Clementine Hunter was a Louisiana artist. She picked cotton in her younger years and later in life picked paints and brush and said she could “mark” a picture if she would “sot her mind to it”.
wordshophop 