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Sunflower County Triptych

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Lagniappes

Sunflower County Triptych

Three poems by James Dickson

Feb 13
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Sunflower County Triptych

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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.
Vandalized Emmett Till historical marker | Photo by Robert Rausch for the New York Times

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.

 

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Sunflower County Triptych

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Lunatics With Carrier Pigeons
Writes Sideways Bird’s Newsletter
Feb 13Liked by Lauren Rhoades

Thank you for sharing these haunting images and powerful words.

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Amelia Franz
Writes Amelia Franz Substack
Feb 13Liked by Lauren Rhoades

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.

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