Pot of Black-Eyed Peas

Kathryn Jones

December 31, 2023

We eat them for good luck on New Year’s Day,

a Southern tradition dating to the Civil War.

Also called a cowpea, Old World plant 

from Africa, food of survival. 

My slave ancestors added rice and ham

to the dish, called it Hoppin’ John. 

They seasoned it with memories, all

they could bring with them across an ocean. 

I pull out my grandmother’s old bean pot, 

hammered aluminum, lid with wooden knob, 

iron handle, blackened bottom from years of use.

The ritual begins: soak the dried peas overnight, 

sauté onion and celery, toss in bacon or ham, 

add plumped peas, chicken broth, simmer.

Cook a side of greens, symbol of money. 

Bake a pan of cornbread, symbol of gold.

Hope simmers in the pot of black-eyed peas

even though we cannot consume enough of them

to counter all the evil in the world. 

We eat them anyway, salted with wishes

for prosperity, equality, an end to division.

Afterward I wash the pot, store it away

until the ritual begins again and I make 

another batch, strength for another year.

Kathryn Jones is a journalist, essayist, author, and poet. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, and in the anthologies A Uniquely American Epic: Intimacy and Action, Tenderness and Action in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (University Press of Kentucky, 2019) and Pickers and Poets: The Ruthlessly Poetic Singer-Songwriters of Texas. Her poetry has been published on tejacovido.com, in the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, and Odes and Elegies: Eco-Poetry from the Texas Gulf Coast. She was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters in 2016.