Jubilee


I rise from black dirt, reconciled to mallows
slaked in deep swallowtail kisses, fretting blues 
riffs to lick the fog from off the levee. My yang 
for this place is the yin in its ground;

the stock and staple of my talk. Its outcroppings, 
more earthy than hallowed, hitched to walking 
plow calluses too poor to miss depressions.

And yet, a provender of sorts: an olio of King 
Biscuit Flour, lard corn dodgers, and loose leaf 
tobacco twist doled out to mildewed gunny sacks, 
hung on half crushed millstones to never dry.
 
There’s a jubilee here that began as a prayer 
where humid evenings come to listen. More refrain 
than spirit at first, but even so, a voice: one
 
that would free the Delta from herself, and reclaim 
her with a psalm—a hymn, in a tongue for every color,
distant but resounding: own-rolled, scored with folklore 
and cipherings, grist to mill and list into river bottom
 
dusters, dis privies with old chamber pots, and bury 
company store tokens in dandelion tumbledowns 
still cottoning to rebel ordnance; pawned 

to one-armed bandits in sundering Woolworth parishes. 
Cyclones that began as gusts with gales of their own, 
fanning seed for more flowers—boasting blossoms 
much too handsome to heart half bloomed.

First published in Beloit Poetry Journal



The Trail of Tears


Grieving wisps of bone whisked 
through misty vapors to the top 
of God’s mountain on the forgotten 
pilgrimage for orphaned souls. 

God cried into woodlands, rapturing
beasts, then formed seven true clans
from seven wolf ribs, and suckled
them at the breast of seven mothers.

He painted their faces in conquering 
colours, and lashed each spirit 
to the talons of an eagle.

First Published in Glasschord Magazine




Beyond the Throes 
                     of Jealous Sires


Night blindsides the stars--
conceals inside their shadows.

Why do sires hate their children?
Even broken flowers yield milk.

Ugly lights breach shuttered 
wombs where mothers kiss.

Drying rain chills the bones--
                            ice seems cold.

There are too many people--
                        no grass, no trees.

The foal stands firm, then suckles; 
freed from a trilogy of shallow
 
breaths, fickle limbs, and wild-
eyed stallions who paw their own
 
reflections, then nuzzle the farrier 
clapping them in irons. Beyond
 
the throes of jealous sires 
are hallowed valleys and clover
 
fields in tall yellow, where fox 
pups and loosed ponies frolic--

             not a hobblestone in sight.

First published in Rose & Thorn Journal




Foundlings


Who will weep with me for this lack of clowns?

This subtle pleading stirring Londonderry’s coddle
soup. Something recent: chervil and coriander—new 
spring lambs; still fetal from backwater, hunkered
down in tallgrass strategy expecting strawman bellows 
to siphon off the fog and return them to their womb 
closets.

Who will pray for them to the one who feeds sheep?

Not Glynnis, the lip syncing songstress whose
ghostwritten mockingbird chords only seem to
lark the music. Not Saffron, the Galway wench;
her yellowed virtues are all in the public domain.

I will bide with them.

I have mirth from the salvers of both fullness 
and fever. A sovereign’s colcannon, shepherd’s
pie, barmbrack and scones. Tuppence for a mother’s 
love and a widow’s mite of sweetbread. And breeze 
from the unclenching fists of miscreants. 

First published in Qwerty