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PAR T T H R E E MAY DAY SERMON .MayDay Sermon to the WOmen ofGilmerCounty) Georgia) by a WOman PreacherLeaving theBaptist Church Each year at this time I shall be telling you ofthe Lord -Fog, gamecock, snake and neighbor-giving men all the help they need To drag their daughters into barns. Children, I shall be showing you The fox hide stretched on the door like a flying squirrel fly Open to show you the dark where the one pole oflight is paid out In spring by the loft, and in it the croker sacks sprawling and shuttling Themselves into place as it comes comes through spiders dead Drunk on their threads the hogs' fat brisding the milk Snake in the rafters unbending through gnats to touch the last place Alive on the sun with his tongue I shall be flickering from my mouth Oil grease cans lard cans nubbins cobs night Coming floating each May with night coming I cannot help Telling you how he hauls her to the centerpole how the tractor moves Over as he sets his feet and hauls hauls ravels her arms and hair In stump chains: Telling: telling ofJehovah come and gone Down on His belly descending creek-curving blowing His legs Like candles, out putting North Georgia copper on His head To crawl in under the door in dust red enough to breathe The breath ofAdam into: Children, be brought where she screams and begs To the sacks ofcorn and coal to nails to the swelling ticks On the near side ofmules, for the Lord's own man has found the limp Rubber that lies in the gulley the penis-skin like a serpent Under the weaving willow. Listen: often a girl in the country, Mosdy sweating mosdy in spring, deep enough in the holy Bible Belt, will feel her hair rise up arms rise, and this not any wish May Day Sennon to the WOmen ofGilmer County) Georgia / 287 Ofhers, and clothes like lint shredding offher abominations In the sight ofthe Lord: will hear the Book speak like a father Gone mad: each year at this time will hear the utmost sound Ofherself, as her lungs cut, one after one, every long track Spiders have coaxed from their guts stunned spiders fall Into Pandemonium fall fall and begin to dance like a girl On the red clay floor ofHell she screaming her father screaming Scripture CHAPter and verse beating it into her with a weeping Willow branch the animals stomping she prancing and climbing Her hair beasts shifting from foot to foot about the stormed Steel ofthe anvil the tractor gaslessly straining believing It must pull up a stump pull pull down the walls ofthe barn Like Dagon's temple set the Ark ofthe Lord in its place change all Things for good, by pain. Each year at this time you will be looking up Gnats in the air they boil recombine go mad with striving To form the face ofher lover, as when he lay at Nickajack Creek With her by his motorcycle looming face trembling with exhaust Fumes humming insanely-each May you hear her father scream like God And King James as he flails cuds richen bulls chew themselves whitefaced Deeper into their feed bags, and he cries something the Lord cries Words! Words! Ah, when they leap when they are let out ofthe Bible's Black box they whistle they grab the nearest girl and do her hair up For her lover in root-breaking chains and she knows she was born to hang In the middle ofGilmer County to dance, on May Day, with holy Words all around her with beasts with insects 0 children NOW In five bags ofchicken-feed the torsos ofprophets form writhe Die out as her freckled flesh as flesh and the Devil twist and turn Her body to love cram her mouth with defiance give her words To battle with the Bible's in the air: she shrieks sweet Jesus and God I'm glad 0 my God-darling 0 lover 0 angel-stud dear heart Oflife put it in me give you're killing KILLING: each Night each year at this time I shall be telling you ofthe snakedoctor drifting from the loft, a dragonfly, where she is wringing Out the tractor's muddy chains where her cotton socks prance, Where her shoes as though one ankle were broken, stand with night Coming and creatures drawn by the stars, out...

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