Southern Legitimacy Statement:I am a queer black southern writer who focuses on the liminal spaces of identities that are often classed as other. I was born and raised in Union, South Carolina. This region is often noted as the foothills of the area. I stayed in the south my whole life moving around between coastal South Carolina and coastal Georgia. I finally settled in Moncks Corner, SC which is when I decided to attend grad school. I am a recent graduate of the joint master’s program between College of Charleston and The Citadel. I am placing my work in the context of modernity, identity, and religion. Much of the works submitted will focus on the intersections of the aforementioned contexts while also manipulating traditional expectations of form and verse. My work also features the geographical elements of where I have lived over the years.
Three Poems
Looking At Nature In Cross, South Carolina
Three loblollies stand as thrones
Of former monarchs,
And there through the leaves of grass
A copperhead moves.
Sap, pollen, and singed fields
Of forgotten crops sting the nose hairs.
A shiplap dull colored house holds
Hard the secrets of knowing.
The well is full and pushes out
With overflow.
I have never known my life.
Letters to a Liberated Self
I.
Former mysteries of the south hanging—
In our gray and blue wonderful lies.
Here are fields I bleed and grow with black hands—
Here are men I kill for freedom ringing.
Bells toll for the seeds big cotton brings for
The rice and exploitation of the law.
Poor sinners stand and green trees are bending
In the smoke and weight of cannon fodder.
Ryegrass brewing hatred sewn into red,
White and blue cotton threads across dancing
X’s and a symbol of stars. Where’s God?
Where’s the mother I never knew until
We met on a cold block meant for selling—
Unaware of all the lies they’re telling.
II.
All the lies they’re telling at night
Cloaked in magnanimous words on parchment
Propel the maw and spit of the battle.
Musket tears tear apart sinew and blight.
Sulfur is the sweetest escape run high
On church and state and man and self and slave.
Come thou mighty king of all that is right!
Vanquish my alabaster chains of time—
Free me from this war that is not divine.
I am no monster; I was taught to fight.
I want a home that is not property.
I want a land that has no history.
In my dreams I have found the Holy light
Standing on the horizon out of sight.
III.
Out of sight on the horizon dying
In a hymn of promises I found it.
I buried my saber with the blood of
Another slave in the clay of crying.
Where foot meets ground, and ground becomes the flesh—
And unholy marriage of carnage performs
The rituals of feeding, denying
Deserters the salvation of the gun.
Feed them to the dogs and listen closely
To the roots engorge themselves while trying
To forget about the drum and bugle sound.
Open the heavens and let God come down.
IV.
Let God come down and hear the heavens sing.
That drum and bugle is not the supreme.
On the horizon dying out of sight,
I have found the dreams of the Holy light.
All the lies at night they’re telling—
I was put on an auction block for selling.
I want a self that is not property.
I want a land not rich in their history.
I do not want to kill another slave—
There will be no tombstone on my grave.
In the cold ground—no casket—forgotten.
Of the Father’s love his one begotten.
Oh, the battle hymns they will be singing—
Former mysteries of the south hanging.
For the Enslaved Dead
Menses plugged on behalf of colonial
pressure to remove the human
element. The fecality of whiteness
inhabits the conjured space of indigenous wails.
Oh, sweet water of life—before
salvation is known—before savage
meets Christ and language is usurped.
Drowning is painful, but so is bondage.
Wading in water that brings unsaturated sails
herald by the wind, the storm ascends
ahead of the thunder that is heard.
Dried, cracked, salted flesh from
The sea peels layer by layer. Natron
is the salve of slavery. The water
can’t wash away what it brings—
the smell of slavery can’t be distilled by history.
