Another South: Experimental Writing in the South

Stephanie Williams

Stephanie Williams Peerage She walks on ground with feet of clay. Ghanian girl treads the breach.Young.And feet of clay on hard packed dirt go down. heaven staff and earth and rod union with wheat with God. chaff. Whose face is turned? Hers is the face of her mother, who in death bears the face of a rapist pressing down.The face of the Almighty, bearing down in dreams upon the holy man as blood turns to dust from dust. exemplification stigmata white robes bare feet seated peering staff in rooms in hand. silent. The priest intones his sentence.To rest upon the mother’s death, the daughter must atone, as all faces of infraction, as all signs of evil, as the portents of despair and drought, as all must be redeemed, so too must she for the rape that led to her birth. the redeeming effect of blessings and blame of incarnation she the stain, stands sufferings always standing death. wishing water in that order. and flood. A Drunkard Promise When the bride and groom have not yet met there is room for the cabaret and the zaftig lady. He will be whispering, mouth full of smoke and bourbon kisses, straight into her ear. The mirror over the bar will not know their faces falling in the rain, the tinkling of piano keys colored, colored, white. You are she, and what is to be done what ever to be done? Will you wear stockings? Will you prance and preen then with red/lipstick/down/your chin? Won’t you tell me your name You a fat strawberry, a blonde, a blueblack from way– –the resolution happens every verse– and it’s not Mama Cass’s death or sun setting down on newborn western town, it ain’t your sorry ass in Rampart Street hotel de somethin’, somethin’ there’s nothing going on here and ya’ might was well pick a dead horse to finish, not to place. It is the make of busted concrete creepin’ up on somethin’, somethin’ it’s called pizzacatto Your heels are stiletto and still somehow it is all Amos-n-Andy and Tin Pan Alley the way the miracles blend in once upon a sailor, while whispering a smoke-heavy kiss waiting for a train. Another South 235 Of Riches I thought I was a boy in love with a man who leans on things to crease his clothes. We hold stone tablets, warm from the sun. Sweat on chests runs down. I thought we were boys together, you and I drive all night with the top down in humid dark. Crisp and whiteshirted , handsome and rich. I scare myself the day over I am insular and hollow I am a peninsula I am Macedonia and I don’t know what your problem is. I have two eyes can see you from all the way over here. I will follow you everywhere, asking questions tracing telephone wires from here to Athens and back. 236 Stephanie Williams Duchess of Dogs First : the little death le petit mort soon behind, the censor clacking his wooden tongue. Clacking. His wooden tongue, clacking the language of trees not trees. Of trees are bodies. Of bodies are women. Made. Speaking. The theater is dark. The little man in the boat knows the simplest matter of creation. Matter of creation is song.The song sings.World is song. song sing song of solomon sang blood sangfroid oogenesis spatiogenesis Last : the whore. Ladies have come to see her, the singer in a play called “Rêlache.” She is on the stage, different thoughts hittin’ up in her exposed bosoms. She got no name ‘cept what they give her. She opens her cunt to the sniffing dogs, they know her.They got her treed. Treed by dogs.Trees are bodies. Language of bodies.Words of trees. fabula synzhel song, censor, trees, boat all are done so not done She in the mouths of ladies be Duchess of Dogs. Another South 237 coarse rigors Le Printemps This shadow ecstasy, a palm, a turn of his wrist as paperwhites pull from humus ruled and moribund, we take the situation seriously– and bite. Kiddush A romp in the bookish dark. We sleep.And lie. Goose summer, spinning and out of control into slumber falling. Undermining: the Contratemps Join, fail to...