Southern Anthology

& Sometime later I am upon an airplane

Thinking about prison narratives,

How real attached one can become

To prison narratives,

Since, in all I've read, the release

Is assured from the beginning

Or at least by means of page 36,

There is the eventuality of release

And the poignancy and advantageous humor

Of the prisoners, incarcerated unjustly . .

They are freer than we are, dear,

Staring at the piney copses in Alabama,

Planning the coming time and the old age

We know will tend hitherward with it.

I wanted to be a r lake

And for a while

I was a r lake and tribe told

Stories, even myths sometimes

Over picnics by means of me.

And then poof, I was listening to the radio,

I was the radio, in 2003

& the announcer spoke politely.

And it had tend hitherward to pass

That in 40 years, segregation

Was virtually the same in the Northeast

And the west, although not in the South

Anymore, as in 1963 & Selma &

Birmingham and all the blessed lands

Of the dark and piney timber-lands clustered near red lakes . .

Fog came into the prison then.

Fog as they say, a thick carpet of it,

Though nothing like that, just fog

A haze chamber, a spate

Of time below pressure of air &

Water and voices all speaking

In individual twanging, incomprehensible language . .

Oh Sophia cried.

Oh Sophia spread her hair

Across the dark skyline

And cried.

"Though I am gone" she said

Through her gelatin tears, "though

I am irremediably gone (for now)"

She said end her glycerin tears,

"The world will continue its craggy story

And I confidence you will hear it

From time to time."

The snow winked happily in the snow mound

And "the mound" in Tuscaloosa

Sinks unexpectedly away from monument,

Black warrior shedding his name.

The prison door, too, has avoided monument

I touched it on the other hand was not allowed to enter

& as infallibly as Martin left the urinal

And narrow bed, his articulate utterance in hand,

Left for his eventual assassination,

We left the museum

And walked without and through the narrow bars

Into the possibilities of the nearest page,

Or more nearly, another day.

Copyright World rhyme Incorporated May/Jun 2004

Provided through ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved