Abner Jay

I was born during the hard Depression days, O my Lord. In July in south Georgia, where the sun was hot as a blaze. My folks were sharecroppers. At the end of the year, we had nothing, we had nothing. We had nothing but grasshoppers. Looking back over my life, O Lord, I'm so depressed. Help me somebody, I need some rest. O Lord, I'm so depressed. Every boy needs a girl. Every girl needs a boy. I'm a boy so full of love. I have no one to hold my hand. Tell me how long must I wander. Tell my how long must I cry. Will I meet someone? Someone to wipe, dry the tears from my eye? Come on baby, rub my head! Rub my head while I lay down in my bed! Kiss, kiss me! Kiss me baby 'til I feel alright! 'Til I feel alright! Hey! O looking back over my life, O Lord, I'm so depressed. Help me somebody, I need some rest. O Lord, I'm so depressed.

warper

I skimmed 1,000 car grills and
trolled infinitely along the lines of conversations
And I don't find it difficult to write
poems and I don't wrestle with its
ease. I duly cringe at my own
outpourings and swallow the
residual drifting feelings.
I studied the topography of my
mother's scalp through the strands
of her fleeting hair and I felt fourth
grade in a nutshell

"What's a Bidet, Player?"

I went crazy for 12 hours
my dreams bubbled over
into waking and the world turned
Weird.

There were wolves perched on
spears as I held Latin verbs.
A girl had buckshot wounds on her
back like Hawaii splatters across the Pacific

Nashboro

This afternoon I sat in Fort Nashboro
and flayed my mind for wanting more
and for staring down the
mouths
of snakes ringed with statehood
and warning
Thine eyes aren't too far spread for
one
solid
strike

Little City

Little City
what has dropped
tween your seams
and burned spotlights
across jurisdictions
through dork realms
and cool motifs
and overlapping themes
and motifs

On skyscrapers I've seen
three thousand windows
they've spelled your name
and cried for dimes
and held shimmering in the
heaviest of days

the welds fight for support
guilds draw sticks
secret smokes in dark
Throats
black

When It's Wedding Time Down South

Hording Georgia gorges

Raffling Savannah porches

Torching Decatur forests

Touring Milltown florists

Combing empty beaches

Dreaming of future nieces

Truing heart-spoked wheels

Adorning fragrant blazers

Holding freetown doormats

Clutching heartache handbags

Tearstained velour dreamcoats

Foraging in swamps with locals

Diving into murk murk

Swerving into ravines

Jumping guns with Dixie

Starting fires, ziptie bracelets

Nobody ever makes it

The One bleeds y'all together

True voices ring

Droners relax

Your strangle

Isolated, Wild

Clouds so fast
I've never seen
Faggy burdens
Welted worries
Hard-won experience
Yeah we've got it easy
Easy street
Droolers
Drooling puddles
From gapes of wrath

I want to go when the world was
clean
I could fit neath fenceposts
Wade through foliage, thick
Come upon a great cross in the clearing
and be sore afraid
Hear my mother bounce words
from the perimeter,
Cross beetlebacks and grassblade ramps,
Cars churgling to a start
isolated, wild

I want to sit in the forest and graze upon my fears, a knee-hugging experience.

I want a damp leaf to graze my cheek like evading knowledge, I know it's there falling beyond my place in the state flapping to and fro, into the great whiteness that is the flash before sleep and
the flash before death