Music

Yes, it was time
to get rid of them. . . .
the honeysuckles, voluptuous,
had pushed their collars
to the sun,
led the geraniums
from the rock garden,
over the property line
through one-eyed bricks,
a queen's blood,
purple and red trailing
to Big Joe
who sucked their nectar
like a hawkmoth
brilliant
in daylight.

Even then,
he would sell
his fish babies
to white women.
Catfish smeared with
provocation and pismoclam;
Big Joe eating blackberry pies
and talking about some air-plane traveling
place, rivers away
from the concrete damn,
the jeweled square
that was always outdone
by the moon's raised palm . . .
Uruguay or a port promising
the Himalayas--yes, the Himalayas
where Big Joe could be
a starfish on top of a mountain
pointing East
while Negroes went North,
Big Joe left
when front yard nigger statues
were rounded up
for funeral pyres.
Still, he came back
to talk about Freedom Houses, riders,
honeysuckles everywhere:
Japanese weeds and trumpets
the God-forbidden integration:
Big Joe marching
like a row of
fevered cotton. . . .

Yes, it was time
to cut them down:
the clusters fatigued
from dry throats; the stems
broken so easily
by the wind's whisper:
Big Joe pulled from pregnant water.

Karen Mitchell was born in Columbus, Mississippi. She is the author of The Eating Hill and has published in several magazines.

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