~ DELTA POETRY REVIEW ~

Soul Song

Curling mists rising from sloughs in a land table flat

only a few thickets where the water stands full of cottonmouths;

bullfrogs and mosquitoes rest from night serenade

and sun climbs to mid-day heat.

Folks troop to the fields frothed with white to the horizon—

Mississippi white gold mined with sweat on sticky afternoons—

waiting for the sun to kiss the river.

Guitar sings soul in roadside juke joints,

harmonica wails pain away—

blues ooze, cake walk out of doors—

strings sing under the callused fingers of Son:

Muddy wails waters of tears

in a Rainey night in Greenville,

as eternal as the flow of the River to the Gulf.

Late afternoons can still find streams lined with people

stretching poles over holes

tempting mud-cats with bloodbait and doughballs.

It's the forever land undulating in black

beneath your feet that gives it soul,

flavors it with tears.

And the blue notes still rising from bottle neck slides

glide out into the night as rich as black earth

waiting for another sun.

Delta General

Under the levee next to the River
a dilapidated frame store stands
gray-brown on the outside
against Orange Crush signs,
dark behind the screen doors
that gently bang when you enter—
Glass cases full of jawbreakers and case-knives
squat behind humming red Coke boxes;
earth fragrance clings like a lover
around cooler of Blue Ribbon and Jax.

Men take their ease in rocking chairs
and escape the outside heat
in the cool of the store.

Dr. Emory D. Jones is a retired English teacher who published poems in such journals as Voices International, The White Rock Review, Free Xpressions Magazine, The Storyteller, Modern Poetry Quarterly Review, Gravel, Pasques Petals, The Pink Chameleon, and Encore: Journal of the NFSPS. He lives in Iuka, Mississippi, with his wife, Glenda. He has two daughters and four grandchildren.