Southern Legitimacy Statement: Native to Virginia and long-resident in Georgia, I’m as Southern as Southern can be. (Let’s not talk about the seven-year stretch in New Jersey.) A prominent Mid-Western poet once told me during a workshop, “I could listen to you read the phone book.”
pluff mud
with each shoe stuck
in tidal muck
i start to stumble
then take a tumble
fall on one knee
indelicately
both hands as well
so spend a spell
in real distress
plus awkwardness
yet up i get
since not dead yet
and home i go
my head hung low
