Sunflower County Triptych
Three poems by James Dickson
Editor’s note: Line spacing becomes distorted on a mobile device, so I recommend reading these poems on a desktop computer. You can read Jamie Dickson’s Rooted Questionnaire here.
I. Tallahatchie Flux
Since Heraclitus tells us we can’t step into the same river twice, can I bathe in the Tallahatchie and come out clean? This is not the same mud that clung to young Emmett Till, the same water that bloated his body, that drug his blood into itself. What muddies the water today if not the bloodstain? Frat boys from Ole Miss recently pinged the heavy iron historical marker with their hunting rifles, denting and bulging it into a contortion recognizable only as destruction. They posed for pictures, kneeling beside it like a felled deer, like another trophy to grin over. These were not the same hands that beat Emmett, bound him, threw him into the soft current that changed the smiling child into corpse, the river no longer river, but ligature, blunt force weapon, generational trauma. The river now is not the same river, but the current has gone unchanged.
II. Pneuma Akatharton
Carolyn Bryant uses
supplemental oxygen
to help her breathe;
the cannula tubes lay
draped around her neck
like lace.
Carolyn Bryant
uses supplemental
oxygen
to help her
breathe,
the cannula tubes
lay draped around her
neck
like lace.
Carolyn
Bryant
uses
supplemental
o x y g e n
to help
her
breathe
to
help
her
breathe
breathe
breathe
oxygen
around her
neck
to breathe.
III. Cigars and Scotch with Roy Bryant
I whistle a cat call at him. He grins. “Want to go for a swim?” he asks. “I know this nice place, real secluded.” “Oh, Roy. You’re too kind. Maybe afterwards you can give me some marriage advice? Or tips on not getting arrested for food stamp fraud. Or a welding lesson.” “Ohh, now look. Precious Billy Clinton pardoned me for the food stamp business. Not the first time the legal system was kind to Ol Roy.” He takes a long draw from his cigar, exhales nothing. Roy’s grin slips as he drops to all fours. “Goddammit,” he sputters between retches, “here we go again.” Dry heaves, at least a dozen, and his neck begins to bulge, deform into pregnant bulk larger than his head. The mass moves mouth-ward. I hear the clink of metal on teeth, see his jaw unhinge, and out it falls. He doesn’t need to tell me this is a fan from a cotton gin. Roy wipes his mouth, sits full lotus and starts to rip the fan apart, eating it by the handful. I sip my scotch. “You look mighty comfy,” he says between gnaws. “but I think you look a lot like me, too.” Glass to my lips again, but it tastes like mud and metal.
James Dickson teaches English and Creative Writing at Germantown High School, just outside of Jackson, MS. An MFA graduate from the Bennington Writing Seminars, he is the recipient of Mississippi Arts Commission fellowships, was named High School Literary Magazine Advisor of the Year by the Mississippi Scholastic Press Association, and was invited to speak at the National Educators Association 50th anniversary celebration “The Promise of Public Education.” His poems, book reviews, and essays appear in The Common, Ruminate, Hospital Drive, The Louisiana Review, Spillway, Slant, Poetry Quarterly, McSweeney’s, Sylvia, and his first collection, Some Sweet Vandal, was published by Kelsay Books this May. He lives in Jackson with his wife, their son, and a small menagerie of animals.
Thank you for sharing these haunting images and powerful words.
Haunting images, indeed. I left Mississippi long ago and only return for visits and funerals, but I spent part of my childhood just a literal stone's throw from the courthouse in Sumner, where the trial was held. Never learned about Emmett Till until college, though.