Packin' Four Corner Nabs
...butter from packin’ four corner nabs even after the shower down spot a teamster card on the visor Published in Off-Season City Pipe: Work (Minneapolis: Coffee House Press, 2005)....
Consolation
...the back bench seat of some Rambler or Packard or 56 Chevy we've found just to take them back, maybe Boyett, too, maybe Boyett in front, beside the wheel, cruising...
Antietam
...button, a bullet, a tooth migrating to the surface. We searched around. On our way back to the bus a boy tripped me and I fell— skidding hard along the...
Geography
...of blackberry, the coins flattened on the tracks. We can’t help it— already, we’re leaning too hard toward metaphor: my father searching for the railroad switch. It was here, right...
Homage to Mississippi John Hurt
...fingerpickers, lost in dark mud, two folkies found you in the singing vinyl and asked, "How do you do that with a guitar?" and searched maps of Mississippi for the...
The Flood
...full of water. And think of my birth: the scalpel, my mother’s skin parting like a sea of red water. In the dream of the flood I'm always the one...
"A DASTARDLY CRIME: A Negro Assaults' [sic] a Lady Near Ponce de Leon Springs."
...[sic] time they arrived there was quite a crowd gathered, and the woods and fields in the vicinity of Ponce de Leon were thoroughly searched, but no trace of the...
Elegy for the Native Guards
Now that the salt of their blood Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea . . . —Allen Tate We leave Gulfport at noon; gulls overhead trailing the boat—streamers, noisy...
Substantiation
...shade the one eye. A cruiser eases through the streets, searchlight in doorways, the driver white, dressed like a cop but for the rope marks at his throat, the bullet...
Six Yellow Stanzas
...white kerchiefs waving back and forth made languid light. 2. Langour. I lay back in the bucket seat, for the first time let a yellow boy kiss me and kiss...