Three Early Poems From the Late South

    by Gary David



I.   The Stumps of Eastabutchie, Mississippi

A red clay road tries to wash us off 
its slick back, but somehow we stick. 
Violet clusters of wisteria hang 
between white moths of dogwood.  
On the porch of a tiny tin shack, 
a gray man in bare feet and T-shirt 
greets us. His hand thrusts forward 
to shake hard as the ash wood handle 
of his sharp ax. Somehow he trusts us.  
He shows the scar on his chest 
where last fall a chain saw gnawed.

Tough as a stump, he talks his trade 
of wood cutting. How it cuts deep 
his people—black and white. The way 
dealers with blank ledger faces 
weigh the wood, size up and grind
the pulp, treating him and his sons like 
toothless machines: the missing link 
between pine and paper. He feeds us 
hot dogs and Kool-Aid. We promise ourselves 
we’ll work for safer labor, a new union.

Tonight we sleep in the big city.  
And tomorrow, white sheets ready 
to record our inkblot dreams, perhaps 
we’ll remember the scent of pine sap
from crosscut logs, his beads of sweat lost 
in a shifting mountain of sawdust.


II.   T-bone and a Half Pint                                                   

“I’m like God. I like everybody.”

Mikaela Sue, my Cherokee half 
polecat neighbor from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma 
–Mike for short– was mistaken 
one New Orleans steam bath afternoon 
by a bouffant fatback two-stepping 
in a hand-me-down evening gown
for being a lady-liker.
 “I aren’t 
a faggot. And if you think so, 
sister, I’ll knock your socks clean 
over this here bar!” Mike screeched 
for another shot of Yukon Jack 
to freeze her wheezing 
cancer in its snow-shoed tracks 
as the bucktoothed dancer sidled off 
to stick her jiggle in the ear 
of some hit man for the Klan.

Night fell before we staggered home—
T-bone and a half pint 
under my arm. And I picked a git-fiddle 
to Hank Senior on the record box 
while she sang in memory 
of her twenty-year-old voice heard 
twenty odd years ago over 
the Grand Ole Opry radio, she said.
Serving me the meat, she downed 
her cough syrup—dying by the ounce.


III.   Mississippi Back Roads

As you pass the churches and cemeteries both 
full on Sunday morning, you find 
you’ve picked up a passenger 
along the way. He sits elfishly on your right 
shoulder as you drive. He waits 
patiently, humming to himself.
Instead you hear a fly buzz. He knows 
exactly how much time. He might 
file his nails, or doze.
                                                                                                                                         
Just when you’ve forgotten him
(or somewhat later) he turns on you, demands 
the wheel of your car.
Shaken, you’re driven down 
a road you’ve never seen 
before—until you run out 
of road. Between the shadows 
of wisteria he takes you.
In a white rush that leaves 
smeared silence, his grin whispers:
You’re already dead. And you notice 
red mud sticks to your boots.