Confederate Pride Day at Bama (Tuscaloosa, 1994)

That first time, my liberal white friends try
to prepare me. I might feel ashamed when I hear
rebel yells, see the too familiar flag waving.
You know they're going to sing that song, don't you?

The fraternity boys dressed in gray uniforms,
marching boldly around the yard, then coming home to black
maids, their heads tied up in bright handkerchiefs.

Faces greased to perfection once a year. Can you believe
they make those women dress up like mammies?
Southern meals prepared with eye-rolling care.
You should stage a protest. For me or for my mama?

Come day, go day, God sends Sunday and I see those
sisters at the grocery store buying food every week.
We smile and sometimes meet each other's gaze.

Nod.
At the very least, write a letter. Some kinds of anger
need screaming. Some kinds just worry the gut
like a meal of unwashed greens, peas picked

too early from the field. Or a dark woman, her brow
wrapped in red, smiling to herself, then hawking
and spitting her seasoning into a Dixie cooking pot.

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers graduated from Talladega College and received the MFA degree in creative writing from the University of Alabama. She has received awards from the Rona Jaffe Foundation for Women Writers and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for Women. Her poems have appeared in Identity Lessons, Poet Lore, and Brilliant Corners. Her book The Gospel of Barbecue (Kent State University Press, 2000) won the 1999 Stan and Tom Wick Poetry Prize. Jeffers was reared in Durham, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia, and now lives in Talladega, Alabama.

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