Welcome to Kilmichael, Mississippi,
where stray tufts of cotton are caught
between dried out scruff of grass,
flanking the highway in old Confederate ways.

Drag your lovesick body
across the Tennessee River  
through the old railroad bridge, 
at the end where the body was tossed—dead  
weight, whatever made it human,  
gone—bras and panties caught in the trees, 
feminine flashes of pink and purple, 
intimacy on display. 

In Kilmichael, the soil is dark 
and cotton is a king,  
once gorged—fat packaged 
around the wall of an artery— 
now starved, 
as he drives too fast in the slow lane, 
chain smoking out the window of a  
bone rattling Toyota,  
and giving me the eyes. 

I hope your mother enjoys  
the fruit of the underworld, 
and my friends won’t burn you 
like they have others 
in crowded parties 
or in the trees by the train tracks 
with lighter fluid in clear plastic bottles, 
might as well be vodka—they drink  
it just the same—the potato kind, of course, 
chased with a pickle.  
The spark comes with the snap of their fingers, 
stalling until they press their forearms to mine, 
and there goes that night, 
lost in redneck cornfield bullshit, 
where King Cotton reigns outside  
the government’s grasp—hell,  
you can’t even get an ambulance out here, 
rattling axles down the Natchez Trace, 
till the white flag raises across flat land, 
seceded states stitched back together,  
borders crammed and reformed, 
and this place, thinks the city woman,  
is all together the same.  

Cold sunshine catches deer the carcass aside the road. 
Fibers tangled in bloody, matted coat, she seems to say, 

Sweet Kilmichael, what can I know of you?
For all I am is feminine display, 
a visitor in your heavy December gloom.