Brown Country

Why certainly I loves country
am partial to a sad sappy love song
and head back howling for a lost love
I live to the tune of hoping hopelessly
I am country
and drawn to the music of the land
not the red on the white in the blue
but the green and the amber
and the ochre-orange country
Natively black foot
with land earth ocean
where fathers and their mothers smoldered
in the name of the Union
how come ain’t no sad country songs
about Indians being holocausted
or Africans jumping the broom on Sundays
for to never see their Sweety again
When it’s only me
I turn the car radio to it
the spot where God-Family-Country live
polygamously
through the silence a voice laughs asking
“You ain’t really gonna listen to that are you?”
Yeah Good Buddy I’m listening
so let the chips fall where they may
Because I do
do so love the brown and the black
of the red on the white in the blue

Does loving country and craving a song
that brings my own black-balled eyes
up to the depth of my haunted-hunted heart
does that make me a country music fan
a natural for sorrow
a Charlene Pride of poetry
a black country singer
with acoustic and eraser
plucking a nappy live wire

I who sing along with the twanging
of the car radio
with country songs
when nobody is listening
how do you explain being African
and loving country
not the red or the white in the blue
but the green and the amber and the ochre-orange
You never explain
just let the good times roll

Carolina born
so I seen it all
from sea to shining sea island
I play it back to you
with a pencil sharp guitar
and hambone hard with the other
I come backed by fiddle and calypso
And on certain notes
my gullah starts to drawl

Mercy Me
I’ll throw my head back in a minute
even close my eyes tight when I sing
it’s always something about losing my head
or making up with
Or just plain wallowing in the pain of love
Awww come on now
You know how it goes

I’m no Dolly or Billy Ray
But I sho am country

And when I’m gone
Please somebody feed my cat
and in return I’ll make my voice
low country quiver real good
then roll for you
you laughing but
this really ain’t nothing “shakey bakey”
cause I know folks born in a Holler
who scream all their life
and nobody ever writes a song about them
shouldn’t that be a country’s song too
or is that only poverty
and the private property of Bluesmen
and Plumbleached women
another jurisdiction
another country

At the end of my singing
it’s always so Grand Old Oprey hot
that my mascara’s usually running
and by then the Breck hairspray
has wilted my locks
back to lion size normal
and I’m ready to unhitch my silver buckle
drop my jean skirt to the floor
and find me some indigo
to wrap back around my waist

WellShootGoodBuddy
what more do I have to do to prove it
I tell you it’s true I am a black country singer
Cause what there is for me to sing about
Should make you push your beer to the side
and take a walk through some
Black family farm land some
Black burial grounds
now sold and desecrated
by golf ball signs that say ‘Private Drive’
should make you want to know
this singing southerner’s truth
it’s my job living in this brown country
to take you inside of real live heartache
and make you tap your foot long enough
and make you smile at yourself
until you recognize your Daddy’s face floating
in what I’m saying

Until you ask yourself
as you walk away
does she really listen to Country music
or was that just a poem

Oh why am I fooling myself
They won’t never say
I ever sang a good country song
I’m the wrong shade of country
They’ll just be mad
that I never let you forget for one minute
that country, the land, is color coded
and that country, the music, is pretty shady too

Country
the twanging one you always hear
is sometimes sad
but always sweet
steeped in honor and family
and cheating checkered skirts
and the backside of some poor slithering creature
pummeled and stretched
into a pair of roach killing boots
they dance to the sizzling notes that
I just lean and listen to
the long and lazy stretched out lines
about life
but whose life
and whose country

This is not about happy endings
this music ain’t concerning Cinderellas
but stepsisters and sons and pumpkins
and shoes that never fit some feet
and the lonely of life
and how dance it back away
so why does
this Black girl’s iambic feet
always have to doe-see-doe in your face about it
why does she have to sing country music
to herself
along in her car to not be afraid
why can’t she buy a front row seat
and wave to Naomi Judd
singing those too close to Aretha like lines
“I love you so stinking much that
if you ever try and leave me I’m with you”

I love country
for the tender story
for the blazing heart
for the ache and sorrow sweetness
that is always there
for the green in the amber of the ochre-orange
in the red on the white of the blue
that I always feel

Oh what the hell
I am country I like
listening to its sweet tang
linger like a sour apple
baked to the pipes of my roasted mouth

As I drive this back road
I take taste of it
as I pull into this honkey tonk gas station
and pump 5 dollars premium
I sing along until
I hear my radio’s same song even louder now
and look around for the twin source
rolling out a hiked up summertime window
there in the diner next to the station
I know the words but my daddy’s lips freeze
I end my harmless sing-a-long and look up

I fall into dozens of crawling all over me eyes
that accompany the Kentucky Headhunter tune
they are full of catfish and budweiser and quickly
turn into razors swinging in the August air

I feel the blood gushing
cutting the music into
the red then the white the blue of my brown

This place where the cowboy under the hat
spits the color of my mother’s skin out his window
I was taught never to step inside
he knows all this an follows my every move
guzzling down his yahoo drink
he brings his buddies to the looking glass
they zip their pants
up and down like a fiddle
as one of them begins to step away from the rest
I need to pay for my gas and go
but my swinging feet are stitched frozen to my lips
I look away to the woods all around
My grandfather is untying himself from all the trees
He pops and stretches his many necks back into place
He steps toward me
He says I should consider history
the payment in full

Country music is historical
This is the music we were lynched by
These are the hangman’s songs

Nikky Finney’s books available on Amazon.com:

The World is Round

Paperback: 128 pages ;
Publisher: Inner Light Pubns;
(January 1, 2003)

Heartwood

Paperback: 80 pages ;
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky;
(April 1998)

Rice

Paperback: 175 pages ;
Publisher: Sister Vision Pr;
(September 1995)

Affrilachia
(for Gurney and Anne)

thoroughbred racing
and hee haw
are burdensome images
for Kentucky sons
venturing beyond the mason-dixon

anywhere in Appalachia
is about as far
as you could get
from our house
in the projects
yet
a mutual appreciation
for fresh greens
and cornbread
an almost heroic notion
of family
and porches
makes us kinfolk
somehow
but having never ridden
bareback
or sidesaddle
and being inexperienced
at cutting
hanging
or chewing tobacco
yet still feeling
complete and proud to say
that some of the bluegrass
is black
enough to know
that being ‘colored‚ and all
is generally lost
somewhere between
the dukes of hazard
and the beverly hillbillies

but
if you think
makin‚’shine from corn
is as hard as Kentucky coal
imagine being
an Affrilachian
poet

Frank X Walker’s book available on Amazon.com:

Affrilachia

Paperback: 112 pages ;
Publisher: Old Cove Press;
(March 1, 2000)

“Finally, a gathering of words that fiercely speaks to what it truly means to grow up African-American in Appalachia. These are not stories of those of us transplanted conveniently into the territory for whatever reason. These poem-stories are from a native Affrilachian heart, more specifically, from the man who first created the word in order to define and not be rendered invisible.

Nikky Finney, author of Rice

Frank X. Walker’s website

O Tobacco

You are a Kentucky tiller’s livelihood.
You were school clothes in August
the turkey at Thanksgiving
Christmas
with all the trimmings.

I close my eyes
see you tall
stately green
lined up in rows.
See sweat seeping
through Granddaddy’s shirt
as he fathered you first.

You were protected by him
sometimes even more
than any other thing
that rooted in our earth.

Just like family you were
coddled
cuddled
coaxed
into making him proud.

Spread out for miles
you were the only
pretty thing
he knew.

When I think of you
at the edge of winter,
I see you, brown, wrinkled
just like Granddaddy’s skin.

A ten-year old me
plays in the shadows
of the stripping room
the wood stove burns
calloused hands twist
through the length
of your leaves.
Granddaddy smiles
nods at me when he
thinks I’m not looking.

You are pretty
and braided
lined up in rows
like a room full of
brown girls
with skirts hooped out
for dancing.

Crystal Wilkinson’s books available on Amazon.com:

Blackberries, Blackberries

Paperback: 192 pages ;
Publisher: The Toby Press LLC;
(July 7, 2000)

“a storyteller in the tradition of Southerners such as Eudora Welty and Carson McCullers…She joins that tradition confidently.”

LEXINGTON HERALD-LEADER

Water Street

Hardcover: 175 pages ;
Publisher: The Toby Press LLC;
(August 2002)

A native of rural south central Kentucky, Crystal Wilkinson, is a poet and short fiction writer as well as an arts administrator and public relations professional. She grew up in Indian Creek, Kentucky. She is currently working as creative writing instructor and assistant director for the Carnegie Center for Learning and Literacy in Lexington, where she also heads the center’s writing mentor program and public relations efforts. Crystal is also a member of the creative writing faculty for the Kentucky Governor’s School for the Arts, a state-wide arts opportunity for high school sophomores and juniors. In addition, she has conducted various creative writing workshops and performed literary readings for both adults and children including central Kentucky area schools and colleges

For nearly ten years, Wilkinson has worked as a marketing and public relations professional. Crystal1s poetry and short fiction has appeared most recently in Obsidian II: Black Literature in Review , Southern Exposure, The Briar Cliff Review, Calyx and Collage and Bricolage. She has received recognition for her craft including being named a 1997 Kentucky Arts Council Al Smith Fellow; being selected to participate in the 1996 Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Writer1s Week at Virginia Commonwealth University; and being named a 1995 and 1999 Kentucky Women Writer1s Fellow by the Mary Anderson Center for the Arts in Indiana. Her talent has also been recognized by the Kentucky Foundation for Women, which provided her with funds in 1994 and 1998 to complete a collection of short stories.

Raised by Women

I was raised by
Chitterling eating
Vegetarian cooking
Cornbread so good you want to lay
down and die baking
“Go on baby, get yo’self a plate”
Kind of Women.

Some thick haired
Angela Davis afro styling
“Girl, lay back
and let me scratch yo head”
Sorta Women.

Some big legged
High yellow, mocha brown
Hip shaking
Miniskirt wearing
Hip huggers hugging
Daring debutantes
Groovin
“I know I look good”
Type of Women.

Some tea sipping
White glove wearing
Got married too soon
Divorced
in just the nick of time
“Better say yes ma’am to me”
Type of sisters.

Some fingerpopping
Boogaloo dancing
Say it loud
I’m black and I’m proud
James Brown listening
“Go on girl shake that thing”
Kind of Sisters.

Some face slapping
Hands on hips
“Don’t mess with me,
Pack your bags and
get the hell out of my house”
Sorta women

Some PhD toten
Poetry writing
Portrait painting
“I’ll see you in court”
World traveling
Stand back, I’m creating
Type of queens

I was raised by women

Kelly Norman Ellis’ book available on Amazon.com:

Tougaloo Blues

This is a beautifully written book of poetry. If you appreciate the beauty of the southern lifestyle, then NOSTALGIA is what you will receive from this book. I loved reading “Raised by Women” and “Aperture” which describes her grandparents’ (on the cover) thoughts and dreams. Nostalgic and sensous best describe Dr. Kelly Norman Ellis’ poetry.

Review on Amazon

We Raised You

My griot TOLD me
We celebrate
EL DIA DE LA RAZA!
explaining how AGUELOS mother
Was TAINA..CON LA PIEL DE CANELA
and that beautiful long hair…
covering her back
like a queen’s royal gown…

I used to wash it, comb it,
and twist it into the crown she wore
while watching the creator’s wonders rise and set.

She TAUGHT me
about my 3xgreat grandfather
a handsome preacher Man…
un ESPANOL ALTO!
as tall as the horse he rode
on his wedding day…
who used his divine PRAYERS, to catch snakes.

I learned the story
of El TUCO snake!
which came calling
for my TATARA VISA AGUELO,

A preacher.

Not a southern GRITS, EGGS and HAM preacher,
who has the congregation swaying
like JONAH in that ship,
but an island VIANDA and VERDURA preacher,
that fills the aisle wit the HOLY GHOST
and spends the afternoon fanning the congregration.

The story began with a
young snake,
caught in between MACHETE strikes
on a BURNING afternoon
at the cane fields.

It ended with the TUCO on the yard
and the twenty country feet long
father GONE…
After! A three hour PRAYER
of SALVATION.

My griot TOLD me
we did not RAISED you
that way!

Love-less
Faith-less
Culture-less

She Said!

LOVE UP
PRAY UP
WAKE UP

‘Cause,
we’ll always raise you up straight
and now it’s YOUR turn,
to keep the winds whispering…
OUR WAYS.

The Execution Will Not Be Televised
(for Mumia Abu-Jamal and Gil Scott-Heron)

You will not be able to stay home
You will not be able to tune in and veg out
You will not be able to raid your GE refrigerator during commercials
Because the execution does not bring good things to life
And the execution will not be televised

The execution is not an IBM e-business solution
The execution will not be seen on NBC now more than ever
The execution will not exhort you to just do it
To do the dew
Or to be like Mike
Because the execution
Will not be televised

The execution is nothing it obeys our thirst
The execution does not taste great
Though it is less filling
The execution is not fan
tastic

Perry Mason will not save the day with a last act plot twist
The Power Rangers will not somersault to the rescue on crayon colored arcs of light
There will be no big screen spin-offs
With hit singles and action figures

Kool-Aid will not hear the call
And ride his stubby legs through the prison wall
And straddle the rubble with an ebony smile
Stretched wide across his sugar-filled crimson belly

None of that can happen
Because the execution
Will not be televised

You can‚t see the video in the privacy of your home
You can‚t write or call for a transcript
But if you are able to stay home
If you are able to tune out and veg out
If you keep on waiting and waiting
It‚ll sure enough
Be in the paper

Cowboys

Brothers in the street
Playin’ cowboys again
Prayin’ a stray
Don’t catch my first-born
Brothers pullin’ drive-bys
Before the rooster crows
And don’t you know
The chickens
Are coming home
Could have sworn the shots
Came from Cecil way
I skip that block sometimes
Take the long way
Home
Not being a punk
Just making sure Daddy
Hangs around for his Son
I heard what went down
The other day
Circle of Blue
On a block of Red
Brother clutchin’ his side
Like he’s tryin’ to
Hold
In
Life
Coat crumpled on the
Concrete
Soaked with his insides
I ain’t been through since
At night that is
‘Cause I knew what was coming next
I ain’t wishin’ death on their door
But when you know
You know
Must have been the shots I heard
See
I’m livin’ in the West End
And I’m stayin’ in the West End
It’s Hell on Earth
I just happen to be from Hell’s
West Side

Yeah
They got game for your ass
Enough to make you think twice
About how cool
You thought you was
Fool tried to steal my front door
Had it hangin’ by a thread
But Sir Friendly C
Sittin’ on my couch
Talkin’ ’bout
“It’s just the wind”
I let it go
Like I’m a argue with 5-0
In my own crib
Now One Time knows
Where I live and he’s thinkin’
“Nigger
Why’d you waste my
Time?”
You know I thought about
Packin’ heat
Blazin’ them
‘Fo they blaze me
But what happens when
Baby Man starts walkin’
And finds Daddy’s gun?
Ain’t go’n be no
Cowboys in this house
You ain’t heard?
The chickens
Are coming home

rooted

i like carved out paths
nicely mowed runways
the salute of oaks bowing
pussywillows applauding in my sway

i don’t mind sauntering last
the way prepared
and i think harriet understands
she and sojourner shaking heads
of wildflowers at me
catcalling “go on, girl!”
as i step onto well worn footprints
it’s their hands that press
forward my back
rooted. rooting.

“didn’t i knock over trees for you, girl?”
ida b. huffs at my spine
as they together shape smooth
branches worry whipped into it
i hang onto them
sanding my skull with the roughness of their palms
kneading to set my mind
before the world hardens it

this is no pampering
as i teeter in the archway
peek out at miles of the untamed crowd
where i must add my own step
no, this laying on of hands
wills instructions
mary bethune solidly lifting my chin
“didn’t you read mine?”
she straightens my shoulders soberly
fannie lou works her battered limbs,
use them as my divining rod

this ain’t no civil rite
these women were angry
at my 1968 settled softness
since they overcame
and i arrived
now at mid point in my life
i switch seductively there
chosen by these sistas to model
my own stuff
miss daisy thrusting me a ticket
bating me sharply
“we bought you that ticket, girl!”

and they pushed.