~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Feed and Seed

Perhaps not one of us can go home
again, but who would want to?

A scarf of rainclouds had wrapped
around the mountains as we drove

to the quiet town, and now we jogged
to the two-story red brick building

on the corner of the quaint main street,
aiming for the dark green and cream

striped awnings shielding the door
from the glistening droplets as the last

light drained from the sky. The long
time-weathered sign, barely legible,

read “Fletcher Supply Co.” and was
bookended by vintage Coca-Cola discs

the size of table tops. An historic plaque
mentioned these bricks were stacked in

1919; the same year my grandfather
first awoke to the world. The difference

being this building was still standing.
Inside, elderly couples shuffled to

bluegrass music: the fiddle piercing,
the banjo frenetic, the mandolin like

swollen drops of rainwater pattering
on shale. I couldn’t escape the

sensation—who would want to?—
of her hands in mine as she taught me

to freestyle clog. I didn’t know my heel
from a horseradish, but we stomped on

those creaky wooden floors till sweat
soaked through our shirts, someone

whistling when I spun her. When we
paused for breath, an older man,

hunched and mustached, leaned over
and said, “bluegrass on Fridays and

Saturdays, church on Sundays!” Well,
that explained the pews, and how

places don’t seem to have meaning
until people bestow it. At times,

we may need to pray; at others, we
need to dance. What are our bodies

supposed to do with space, with
themselves? We whirled the night

away until the band closed out their
set with Hank’s classic gospel hymn.

Standing by the front pew, the whole
room singing 'I’ll fly away oh glory,'

we let our shoulders lean and touch,
my eyes pressed shut, my lungs belting

out the tune with all their might,
feeling as if some unsayable place

within me had already taken flight.

Thirty-Three Football Fields

So much can happen in a city, in a day,
especially when it’s untethered and jubilant
New Orleans, and it’s an afternoon in 1925.

Faulkner and Spratling have just finished
fabricating history and gossip while posing
as guides for a walking tour, and are now

back in their apartment, shooting passerby
with BB guns through the wrought-iron
balcony—extra points for nuns—laughing

as they stir up juniper gin in the bathtub.
So much can happen in a street, in an hour,
Katrina’s wailing vortex moved off

elsewhere, dissipating, as the macabre
sight of coffins floating down Canal Blvd
silences the saxophones, a reminder

the dead are always with us. The museum
placard says coastal wetlands are vanishing
at a rate of thirty-three football fields a day:

a hundred yards of land lost for every year
of Christ’s life, or Crane’s, nearly, lost at sea
until the day is yesterday or tomorrow or a

distant decade obscured from view by the
stone-grey clouds. So much can happen
in a swamp, in a second. An alligator

languishes, a mosquito scribbles in
the humid air, a mottled bald cypress
watches the other trees as they quiver.