Southern Legitimacy Statement: Born raised, and breeding kids in Southeast Virginia, though I had to go to Buffalo to get hitched. Didn’t cross the M/D line till I was 19, and then for only a weekend. Unlike many, I know what’s it like to turn soil all day long, which is why I don’t do it.
A Mini-Chapbook of Seven Poems
DEM PECKERWOODS
Dem peckerwoods, dem peckerwoods, dem pecker
woods.
How holy in holly they leap and file,
loon under big fat hill-and moons,
if they were marsh hens they’d be fat and drunk on sawgrass sweet.
Distant fields,
the curve of the earth
like the curve of a breast,
the curve of a beast’s belly
that’s full and lonely and moon.
Dem peckerwoods, dem peckerwoods, dem
Tossing the tearing soil
in harvest heat, nights bearing shadows
night stretched from music on the radio,
a dip in skinny lakes at noon.
Dem peckerwoods, dem peckerwoods,
dem peckers.
How they scatter and return and scatter again
nervous, tempered with shot,
brown nut and dirty scalp
hunting late into lean winter
for old bucks,
slow thin does with child.
Curve of hunger like a ghost of belly round
empty inside
still hot, open, local with desire
dem peckerwoods, dem peckerwoods, dem.
They leap and file under the pickle moon.
IN THE AGE OF DECADENCE
Who says we aren’t rich? For rich eat well,
and do we not eat well? Our sandwiches stack
as far as Ray can stack them. Is there not
tender venison lodged for slow cooking
on the one short day when it counts
to celebrate? And why not unfetter joy?
There is little light, and winter gardening is simple.
There is always rain. The spring plays have yet to rehearse,
and there have been many fires.
Do we not have well worn clothes and coats?
Ah, show some character around the elbows or neck…
The rich may tell stories of where a coat was purchased,
as if that were a tale as chorded and riffed as the one
where two children made haymakers in the snow
over territory and crowned ribbons and ripped the hem below.
As if the snow covered fields could upturn anything
but the smell of manure and wild onion?
Are there are boxes under the tree and fresh bread?
The tobacco is cured and the pipes are hung with the bow,
for fiddle and guitars are sure tokens
of the holidays and of the season of dark.
Bring over the stools and high chairs, neighbors.
Bring over the cabbage and ham, all the worry carrots you can carry.
Rain barrels are full and round as a child’s ear
and has a notion of wonder in her bright face.
The blue sky and clouds reflected in the pool
are as still as I hope to be.
LEMONADE STAND IS NOT
get out, all the way to the curb
because money isn’t a mother
because wheels don’t stop rolling
because a lamp lies upturned against a window
daddy ain’t drunk no more
momma ain’t loaded no more
baby sells lightning by the seashore
baby sells lightning by the seashore
get out, get out, money pulls the trigger
because a man’s game is cheated
because a woman ain’t no purse
baby sells lightning by the seashore
baby sells lightning by the seashore
because momma is dead in the ground
because daddy is dead in the ground
baby sells lightning by the seashore
HOW TO FIND THE EDGE OF THE ATLANTIC OCEAN
Box, box, box, box, box, block end
at sharp right, and box, box, box.
Houses continuing down to the stilted salt house
and the knacker’s yard, the one rum house
big as an Alaskan rig.
Bucks rack over does in field,
Eat grain, brace horns.
Corral in the bar of the gin people
in the narrow fishing town.
Spend too much time staring
across the bay’s dumb grey face.
Buck thistle. Moot flower, a thyme
that grew up in purple curls,
like the hair of clown children
that stop in the square every fall
for harvest fest. Only the celebration
remains, a circled date on a farm calendar
the day off from school.
Pity the wood that discovered it was a pier
an easy slut for boats and fish,
men wipe their boots and boys
do what they wish with what was so green
now grey and dry.
Wild minds like a topspin of ice
forming a rime on the salted ropes,
the edges of the dock turning white.
The storm is heavy and high,
dragging it’s drowsy head across a desk,
lightning, like a teacher’s finger, dry and hot,
scratches arithmetic and Latin across the slate colored sky.
PRAYER FOR WATER
River runs all day and never gets anywhere
that forbidden desire
just
doesn’t
stop
*
Rice and all its water
Rice and all its water
Mouth gonna eat
gonnabackmouth
backmouth
backmouth eat.
And the bay, ripeness of it
coming back where the sea has exposed its neural reach,
the smell of her tall bacteria.
The key she is thine
The key she is thine
Come back here gull
Come back to your first mother
*
Rain shooting through a gargoyle’s mouth,
a tall glass of ice water in July,
a forest rainpool,
the storm fresh leaves laid down low.
This is how to pray.
KEVRON TELLS DEON ABOUT THE FIGHT
Jenea slammed Kiki in the back of the skull
with that fat purple ring she wears, ya know?
She’s skunking Kiki and spitting in her hair
and punching her fucking neck. Her neck, yo
and Kiki”s face is just bouncing off the hood.
And man she tries to turn around, and slips
gets trapped in her own turn, and Jenea keeps hitting,
but now it’s on Kiki’s nose, and Kiki’s bleeding,
her eyes watering, but Jenea never quits, right?
Just like her sister. Breaks the bitch’s glasses, yo. Damn,
but Kiki turning around saved her neck, man,
cause if Ferry didn’t bust it up any sooner,
her neck would have been snapped back,
cause Jenea had her whole weight in it.
Plus, everyone knows Kiki can’t fight.
LEMONADE STAND
Knuckledrag and bad boy’s game.
Lying and keeping
a little to the side,
no more talk
old ladies on the block.
old ladies on the block
Raincoat blues and the Blue Owl, a barrel house
bar for jazzboppers
and string bean painters shucking leftovers at the bottom of the sea.
Out of control with block letters
and a bag of shortweed.
No littlemore talk, be love afraid.
Old ladies on the block.
