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Poetry
Southern roots, sundry hurts, hells and losses, to home again. Poetry
Poems that move from The South to a wider world and witness. Essays
Includes "Rudy and John" (first publ. in Ascent, on work with the United Mine Workers);"One Heart's Canon" (first publ. in The American Scholar, on poetry I love);
"Illegitimacy and Stigma: Living with the Burn" (first publ. in Michigan Quarterly
Review, on unwed motherhood and adoption).
Edited Non-fiction
The Civil War diary of a Georgia girl in Louisiana. |
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Early Red Bride
I was born baldly red, fed maraschino cherries
and strawberries – real Florida strawberries
red to the tip and half a hand big – I got
Red Eye swimming at the lake, ate Red Hots
at the movies Saturday afternoons oh I wore
a red hibiscus in my hair and in a halter dress
did jitterbug under strung lanterns
of the schoolyard. Under the turning mirrored
globe of the ballroom, in my red
velvet sheath dress I slow-danced,
and so married, still in my teens, and rubies
hung in my long-pierced ears.
(First published in Chester H. Jones Foundation National Poetry Competition Winners 1989.)
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