my invertebrate liver.

for my Grandma.

As if astronomy ain't enough

I wake up each morning with a poem stuck in my head that Lucy, the neighbors

6 year old Rottweiler, wont  chase out.

And I am holding, just as Grandma did,

the eggs to the new light, seeing if

the embryo marked by silence and calm

wants concord or tranquility.

Close to where the peanut ovum ripens

bends into the soil; still too close

to the hogs, pulpy with immunity,

with pink snoots stuck thru the wire fencing.

I'm on the planet Georgia and I am 7.

I haven't had sex yet. All the women

smell of biscuits and the cavitation of gravy,

organ meat and China berry switches.

Cane has been chopped and stacked

in neat rows by hands as black as night.

Someone tall slips a sugar lozenge under

my tongue and I suck it until the pulp is

left to wander in my mouth like a lost soul.

A snake is spotted. I am cautioned

to stay in the bay of the pickup with its

chipped paint and the flat spare on the bent rim.

The snake is killed. I am safe. It is here I

would learn that a good soaking rain puddles,

where a bad one floods the well with silt.

Here where I would notice the "White Only"

signs always painted in bold white lettering,

That were you to gaze out the corner of your

eye, as Clint Eastwood did so often

in "The Outlaw Josey Wales" it would scream at you.

And you would get so sick of the f*****g

screaming, thru the virtu of curious bliss,

and would hurl the stone tablets to the ground.

Take the calf that they had made in Exodus 32

and grind it into powder.

Reviews

[Lydia Shutter]

A powerful story here! The imagery is vivid and the pain of hatred is felt intensely. As a young girl, I traveled by train to the Southern U.S. and saw the separate water fountains and restrooms. I was appalled. I asked my mother why they were there and she said some people were too ignorant to understand we are all human and we all deserve the same rights. We have come a long way since then, but I know prejudice still exists....perhaps it always will. However, bringing it out into the open as you did in this well written poem is the only way to make people understand! I especially liked this line, " I suck it until the pulp is
left to wander in my mouth like a lost soul." Such descriptive imagery and great simile! Lydi**

[writing mojo]

Silt is a great word. I love that word. It was used in this piece perfect, and i think it adds, and sums it up, this inspiration requiem : once rocky now are sandy gray areas so deep that they aren't seen or never move until there's an a wake coming to shore from a long journey...yeah, that's it..I wish we could all get it the way you do dana..I love it when you can share your life in that current of thought...

[Pete Langley]

As a limey cockney, there is no way I can fully appreciate the complete subjugation and removal of basic human dignity suffered in the South....and how it`s still perpetuated in many ways. I think we Brits started it with slavery. You`ve managed to produce a powerful and affecting piece from small glimpses .P.

[Delmar Cooper]

More of a short story (hoorah for you) than a poem. A prose poem maybe? We may be of an age, pity you old one, though a city dweller I remember the farm "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" dodging long range spits of Brewton snuff and "lending a hand" with the cotton. Amazing how much weight a hoe can gain in just a few hours. I remember the signs, water fountains, we - the esteemed white race- got the cool water. Restrooms and the moveable bus signs. Once a lady of a different complexion sat next to a young white man, well I say man, let it pass, and he hit her. The driver went and found a Birmingham policeman who arrived like God from on High. A surly,burly red spotted God, he snatched the young man up by one ear, and duck walked him to the door, never to be seen again. That was a pretty good day.

[W.k.kortas]

Wel, there's snakes and snakes, and rainfall and rainfall as well. Now a lot of folks would tell a story and try to relate how things were by hitting us in the face with it until it hurt, but the best and smartest storyteller sneaks up along side of you and makes the whole thing seem like your idea.It's all a bit like a patchwork quilt--scraps of this and bits of that which aren't much of anything by themselves, but if its all put together in the right way, you'll step back and say "Well, how about that?" Well, how about this?