Ballad Against Cities
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- Ballad Against Cities
Particularly those of lights. Popular as the thought of staying, the act of going.
The farm is down. The farm is on.
In 1920s Texas a full third of rent farmers (150,000 families) moved each year. This is not to say they meant to. Croppers and half-tenants, tenants. 100,000 black troops had come back from France to an oddly heightened heat and a bumper crop.
The farm is keep. The farm is you.
A set of songs was wondering. A question big as this field, also cracking open in the heat:
How’re you gonna keep them Down on the farm Once they’ve seen Gay Paree? The farm is how. The farm is them. [End Page 1071]
Chi Elliott, a Cave Canem Fellow, lives in Oakland, California. She has published in African American Review, Notre Dame Review, and Margie. She is studying for two graduate degrees, the MFA in creative writing at Warren Wilson College (NC) and the PhD in American studies at the University of Texas (Austin).
