Mississippi

Southern faces

pale and fat

biscuit dough faces

flat-nosed dead-eyed

faces, faces and bellies

swollen tick bellies

dripping drooping over

belts and skirts

pressed against

buffet line breakfast bars.

Waddling fat asses

large and shapeless in

cop uniform pants

men with guns and

giant sack of flour

women asses cooling in

the air-conditioned SUV

seats racing nascar fantasy

interstates.

Drunken sloppy vomit in

the kudzu Friday night

strip bar night of rat-eyed

Southern faces plastered

with beer drool ogling

women things, genetic

mishap female things

in pretty women

costume bodies

that dont quite fit.

Snatching dollar bills

tentacle quick

fish cold swimming

through cloudy water

sewer music shit plastered

tastes spit covered

mall parking lot.

Buy a stripper something

anything for

fallen Southern belle

deserving entitlement

lazy ex cotton-picker

nose picking moron

cashiers

tattooists

newspaper columnists

TV commercial producers

shaping expectation

whittling down to

Simple Simon pie-faced

Moon Pie doctors

lawyers drawling

drooling professional

babboons looking

down their noses

throwing shit

at the monkeys

in the other tree.



(Jackson, MS. 2003)