The poem Mississippi/Minnesota won 2nd Prize in Wundor's Contest in Innovative Poetry.
Mississippi/Minnesota
We're hanging nooses to remind people that times haven't changed. —State Capitol grounds in Jackson, Mississippi, Nov. 26, 2018.
Our toes, little larvae in river mud,
a river bull-nosed as catfish,
dull as its carp,
thick in its spasms.
On its over-hung shore,
heat gelled on our child-skin,
onto neck, into sacrum,
our pallor of paraffin.
We played that heat
was weightless,
beside-the-point
as gnats up our noses,
and imagined Deep South
at the other end, the Gulf
and its bayous,
hypoxic and loaded.
River. Snake that bucks
between teeth of a hound,
I fear you.
Somewhere, a branch and a rope,
a swing and a noose.
Mississippi, goddam,
sometimes I loathe you.