“Bounty Everlasting” seems a perfect way to describe poetry from twenty-five years of Southern Cultures. From its earliest days, the journal has featured poets whose ability to encapsulate and transform human experience is both quintessentially southern and a testament to their ability to make the most wide-ranging subjects feel deeply familiar and local to the reader. We feature four poems every year, so the accumulation of poems feels more like a conversation than a clamor of voices. And yet, the range of poetics and experiences speaks to the journal’s deep understanding that poetry, like the South itself, is constantly evolving and opening outward even as it looks back to the hardest and most painful stories and utterances. This collection, also available in print, was edited by Gabrielle Calvocoressi and Marina Greenfeld and features illustrations by Amy S. Hoppe.
Poetry
Ethel’s Sestina
by Patricia SmithEthel Freeman’s body sat for days in her wheelchair outside the New Orleans Convention Center. Her son Herbert, who had assured his mother that help was on the way, was forced to leave her there once she died. Gon’ be obedient in this here chair,gon’ bide my time, fanning against this sun.I ask my boy, »
Poetry
Semantic Relations
by Adrian BlevinsThough naturally I love them they are a monstrosity, acute and unruly,already pig-headed on the way from the airport to come and infect me with what kind of mayonnaise is better than Hellmann’s and which of usgot the new bike versus who crashed the old and who’s drinking too much versus who ought to get »
Poetry
Elegy for the Native Guards
by Natasha Trethewey Now that the salt of their blood Stiffens the saltier oblivion of the sea . . . —Allen Tate We leave Gulfport at noon; gulls overheadtrailing the boat—streamers, noisy fanfare—all the way to Ship Island. What we seefirst is the fort, its roof of grass, a lee—half reminder of the men who served there—a weathered »
Poetry
Autumn’s Sidereal, November’s a Ball and Chain
by Charles WrightAutumn’s Sidereal, November’s a Ball and Chain After the leaves have fallen, the sky turns blue again,Blue as a new translation of Longinus on the sublime.We wink and work back from its edges. We walk aroundUnder its sequence of metaphors,Looking immaculately up for the overlooked.Or looking not so immaculately down for the same thing.If there’s nothing »
Poetry
Call
by Atsuro RileyIt starts with the lamp that lamped our night our dirt. Cause of this (wear-balded) red-mud ring going glow. The old ever-voice (with the tear through it) intonation, riveting. Souls and appetites (from holler, brink, and gully) lured and drawn. The story-man encircling us binding us by lard-torch and ditty. So. In the beginning. And »
Poetry
“My Aunt Smokes Another Lucky”
by Michael McFeeShe slips it out of its leatherette case,an immaculate cartridgeshe clenches between the red bow of her lipswhile flicking her butane lighter,sucking deeply until the tipstarts to crackle and glow like a fuse. She snaps the lighter shut and blows smokethrough pursed lips over her shoulder,lifting the Lucky between two rednail fingerslike somebody about to »
Poetry
Is for, to Hold
by Bob HicokI didn’t tell the water it was a pitchfork.I believe the water believed it was a tridenton account of the family resemblance.The road had disappeared, the field,the sundial was about to go under, meaning shadowswould have been unable to stay on schedule.When I touched the water with the pitchfork,it stopped rising, and for a week, »
Poetry
Praying with George Herbert in Late Winter
by Tom Andrews 1In fits and starts, Lord, our words workthe other side of language where you lie if you can be said to lie. Mercy uponthe priest who calls on you to nurture and to terrorize him, for you oblige.Mercy upon you, breath’s engine returning what is to what is. Outside, light swarmsand particularizes the snow; tree limbs crack with ice and »
Poetry
Crowd Crush
by Emilia PhillipsI need to start being honestwith my constituents—the mirror and hemlock, the just barely partedblinds and, behind them, my naked body in its easy laborsof making coffee and sighing heavily.I dare someone to accidentally glimpse my nudepantomime of minding my own business. Sometimes I’ve got to be angry to be inthe mood for being angry. »
Poetry
Threads, End of Another Day
by Michael ChitwoodThreads would cling to them,pants, purses, yokes of dresses,as they walked or trotted across the parking lot, releasedby the four o’clock bell. In the building at my backI could feel the throb of second shiftworking the fine strandsthat, which was it?, held them upor held them back from better lives. Country tunes trailed them out »
Poetry
first meeting
by Délana R. A. DameronSome women suffer themselves foolstrying to hold a man who floats between them like driftwood;whose happy tongue slicks his catfish back; who constrictshis lover’s bones as if a black rat snakewhile holding out magnolia blossom & eucalyptus branch offerings—except for Annie who is strong as a water oak; evergreen as pine. Bounty Everlasting: Poetry from »
Poetry
Goldsboro narrative #11
by Forrest HamerI sorely do love her, I thought said.Actually, he said he loved her surely,but Southerners mix words up sometimesand I have often taken them at face value. So as this Southern man was talking aboutthe Southern woman he would marry, it seemed to me grownups tangled their feelingsunnecessarily, and especially love. And,since we were in »
Music
Legend
by Al MaginnesBecause I know her name fromrock and roll biographiesand the legendary deathof her first husband, becauseI grew up hearing her voiceon my father’s folk records,because I love the mythsthat accompany musicalmost as much as I lovemusic, I should have goneto see her when she was bookedintro the coffeehouse runby a church whose articlesof faith have »
Poetry
American Honey
by Joy PriestIt’s easier than you thought—leaving.Only one night spent sleeping on your ownin a motel parking lot beneath the starsof a summer Muskogee. Your long-built dreaddispersing like gas into a brilliantly blackOzark sky. For once, you are a girl unmolested. You could do this: be a girlwithout a home. Always gone. Perpetually leavingbehind Strip Mall, U.S.A »
Music
The Rime of Nina Simone
by Tiana ClarkArgument How a Slave Ship was driven by capitalism and racism inside the triangle of the transatlantic slave trade; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner Nina Simone came back from the dead to her own Country to stop a graduate student on the way to workshop. * * * I »
Poetry
A List of Waters
by Tyree Daye1The scar that flows from my aunt’s thighto the boulder of her swollen ankle is a mapof the Haw River,each toe a Blue Heron. 2My mama’s water is all water, I’m every river rockinside her being smoothed over. 3The palms of my uncle’s handsare the Deep River when he is holding a gutted trout.Always somethingis bleeding. »
