1. This is the South’s
Mouth
Open it wide
And see her teeth rotting inside
See the bacci stains
Soaked into the cotton white
Of what used to be
Smell the stench of Jim
And his moonshine ways
See blood leaking
Up at the molars root
As I clamp it
With my rusty pliers
And tear it out
And see a jet burst up
Like oil
And see the blood flood the hole
And see the sagging gum recoil, collapse
Lifeless now
Useless now
Never to heal
The South will always
Feel the gnawing
Of the neglected wound
Where the tooth once gleamed
Before the blood began to overflow
Where the molar used to grow
Here’s the old woman speaking
Hear the old woman speaking
From her old hide chair
In her bulldozed barn
Near her burning fields
Strewn among the fading golds
The chained black figures
Glistening like oil
Their hands in coils
Around the crops
Their movements
Not stopped by the blaze
Or the heat
Or the commotion on the southern street
Where those who stray
Find their bodies swaying
From an old rope tie
Fastened by the only knot
Colours ever known
In these humble parts
As humble carts
Drag humble crops
And humble dead
Along the old beaten way
Through the cities
Past the tracks
Slithering down
The old South’s blouse
And up her shaded sunset gown
Her permission they do not request
For a squeeze of her breast
Or a rut in the valleys
Beneath the flowers
Of her summer dress
Cherry red
Turning bluely black
As the rails keep reaching
Up a withering crack
Going in
Coming out
Draining the blood
From the South
Taking it back
To the black faces
Of the white men
On the Rushmore ridge
Who watch on proudly
As the South is pillaged
And the bodies on the carts
They go stale and bake
All colours
Become black
In the furnace
Of the South’s August blaze
Sheening in the sky
Like a bowie
Unsheathed it strikes
Friend and foe alike
She is desperate
She is dying
And although she should be crying
No tears fall
And no clouds form
And the land dries up
In her furious scorn
And another tooth is torn
And somewhere, out there
Amid the South’s harrowing wails
In the deep of her dry febrile grail
In the night’s plains straining
In the constant heat
The South’s children are born
Into this scorn
Bastards one and all
Southern bells swelling
With northern excess
Southern beaus
Killing
The North’s blood spilling
In patches down the barren borderline
Miles wide
There’s nowhere to run
There’s nowhere to hide
From her children
For her children
This is the South Mouth
Open it wide
Smell her gum flapping
Like soiled raw hide
