Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Eatonton Tableaux Don’t nothing go over a mule’s back that don’t buckle under its belly. * * * Red dirt is the smell of love. * * * The gossips used to say my black great-great grandmother would sleep with whatever jumped her fence, but my white great-great grandfather owned her whole yard. * * * A mother’s palms of cream paper rest on your head. * * * Back in the day, a black man shot a white man for calling him nigger in the morning, then he hid out overnight in the cemetery. The walking sheets couldn’t find him because everyone knows darkies are scared of ghosts. * * * Watch out for snakes licking in a blackberry patch. * * * We lived across the street from the county jail.Through the barbed wire the men waved at us and called out their innocence. * * * Callouses mean sacrifice and you better know it. * * * Anybody thinks Joel Chandler Harris wrote The Uncle Remus Tales obviously ain’t never hung with Bro’ Rabbit. You Don’t Know What Love Is My mother can’t recall the exact infamous year but Mama does know that she & her friends were teenagers when they sneaked out to an official joint in the middle of the woods to listen to Dinah Washington sing their favorite love song.They wanted to dance together so close they’d be standing behind each other but Mama says, Dinah showed up late & acted ugly & on top of that she didn’t want to sing the song. This is supposed to be the story of Mama’s blues & how she threw good money after bad but this is South Georgia & Dinah’s standing in high heels on a Jim Crow stage two feet off the ground. She’s sniffing the perfume of homemade cigarettes, chitlin plates, hair grease one grade above Vaseline & the premature funk wafting up from the rowdy kids with no home training. Can’t even pee straight much less recognize a silver lamé dress. All they know to do is demand one song because they risked a certain butt whipping to be in this joint, in these woods. Dinah won’t sing it, though. She just won’t sing the song. I’m an evil gal, she hollers out instead. Don’t you bother with me! Another South 77 [3.91.8.23] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 16:25 GMT) Five Note Range of Sorrow for Alvin Ailey’s Revelations Wade in this spirit, work, water, code, the five note range of sorrow that all the church can sing. Black belt need to shout rage with open palms, teeth suck of cotton seed and snake beat stick. River deep and long and sound of ripped flesh lapping at the shore. Scent of prayer woman drying her feet on grass plaits Easter branches through her hair. Scent of prayer woman spits duende at the sun, her voice catching and the song ends. The song begins and oh this good news. My Savior’s blood is the Word is my people’s face turned up to blues and yes I hear grief splinter (Jubilee and I cannot find you Lynching tree and I cannot save you Concrete streets and I cannot bear to speak the names aloud again) then I see a host dressed in billowing hope, Holy Ghost singing loud, crowding out the call of death in this red dirt grave. Wade in these cries stretched forth to mercy, runalong to evening then on to day. Drink up the joy splashed in cupped hands: my Lord my God and oh this good news. 78 Honorée Fanonne Jeffers Ezekiel Saw de Wheel And when the living creatures went, the wheels went by them: And when the living creatures were lifted up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. Ezekiel 1:19 Poor Ezekiel, what A lonely man. Feel sorry for him: who cares to notice Ezekiel’s cracked brow, his holy frowns? No one says he’s the one. i saw i saw the spirit entered me i saw four wheels four wings loins circled by fire dogs licked the honeyed blood of jerusalem i saw i saw quickly fall down swallow the dust Who cares if he knows mountains speak, sees man, lion, ox, eagle peeking out of the open side of the Lord? i saw i saw way up in the middle of the air in the middle in the middle in the middle in the middle in the middle in the middle Prophet or no...