South Mouth By JLG Clift (1of 32)

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