Southern

To a Real Standup Piece of Painted Crockery

I wonder what the Greeks kept in these comicstrip canisters.
Plums, milletseed, incense, henna, oregano.
Speak to me, trove. Tell me you contained dried smoked tongue once.
Or a sorcerer or a cosmetologist’ s powders and unguents.
And when John Keats looked at you in a collection of pots
it was poetry at first sight: quotable beautiful
teleological concatenations of thoughts.

Translations from the English

Pigfoot (with Aces Under) Passes

The heat’ s on the hooker.
Drop’ s on the lam.
Cops got Booker.
Who give a damn?

The Kid’ s been had
But not me yet.
Dad’ s in his pad.
No sweat.

Margaret Are You Drug

Cool it Mag.
Sure it’ s a drag
With all that green flaked out.
Next thing you know they’ ll be changing the color of bread.

A Fable

Once upon a today and yesterday and nevermore there were 7 men and women all locked / up in prison cells. Now these 7 men and women were innocent of any crimes; they were in prison because their skins were black. Day after day, the prisoners paced their cells, pining for their freedom. And the non-black jailers would laugh at the prisoners and beat them with sticks and throw their food on the floor. Finally, prisoner #1 said, “I will educate myself and emulate the non-colored people. That is the way to freedom — c’ mon, you guys, and follow me.” “Hell, no,” said prisoner #2.

Hard Rock Returns to Prison from the Hospital for the Criminal Insane

Hard Rock / was / “known not to take no shit
From nobody,” and he had the scars to prove it:
Split purple lips, lumbed ears, welts above
His yellow eyes, and one long scar that cut
Across his temple and plowed through a thick
Canopy of kinky hair.

In Late August

In a culvert by the airport
under crumbling slag
wine colored water seeps
to this pool the two does
drink from: each sipping as
the other keeps look out.
The skyline is a blur
of  barcode and microchip.
Even at home we hold
the narrowest purchase.
No arcs of tracer fire.
No caravans of fleeing
families. Only this
suspicion ripples
through our circles of lamp glow
(as you sweep the faint sweat
from your forehead and flip
another page in your novel)

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