This South: I - poem - Section 3: Sayings, Sermons, Tall Tales, and Lies - Contemporary Black Poetry

African American Review, Spring, 1993 by Ramona L. Hyman

Angular in vision Feminine in aura Masculine in concept Fundamental in landscape

A pointed land Language folk speaking Tongues of a secret ambiguity

(anchored)

On a fragmented landscape

(a canvas)

layered on a black man's hands crooning 'cause white boys churning blues from guitars now

This is the South green grass stretched like lace along a Mississippi trail The men The women whose slurred speech whipped the back of my grandpapa's papa my grandmama's mama wave to me as if I am their own

It is a chorale of waves miscengenated voices of boys and girls she milked of boys and girls she birthed then sold