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Endowment Arts & Letters Editorial Staff Learn about the MFA Program
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A Bottomlands
Farmer Takes A Break From Walking His Levees
By: Jo
McDougall |
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Rice will grow
tall in these fields if he judges
right with his shovel, opening the
levees, closing them, adjusting the
depth of the water. He has walked
these fields all day, dodging
cottonmouths and mosquitoes, lifting mud
and packing it till it shines
like the back of a whale. At noon, he
drives to Brenda’s Truck Stop for
cigarettes. He pauses
before a case of glass miniatures, each
impossibly small. The high-noon sun swaggers into
Brenda’s, tattooing everything: Excedrin, customers, cotton balls, t-shirts, the Coke machine, gum. The window air conditioner shifts down like an 18-wheeler. He opens the
case, takes out an
ice-blue, cantering horse. Light as an
eighth note or a prayer, it stirs in
his hands. |
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In A Delta Courtroom
They Settle The Estate Like hyenas
catching the scent, the
descendants gather to maul the carcass: stocks, bonds,
fields, owed rent, the Midas
flesh of their father. Miles away,
his idle farm remembers
cows. The house drowns, filling itself
room by room with the old
voices, flailing sounds of the lost.
In vain the sparrows chit. Nobody’s
left. Nobody’s listening. |
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