Pluto’s Gate: Mississippi

—for Private First Class C. Leigh McInnis

I appear to be a full-on rich guy

wheeling into Oxford

down the cedar-lined drive across from William Faulkner’s

determined to shield myself (my fancy wristwatch

my roadster

both used both fast as hell) from the shame

I once knew in this my state

beneath my bowl-cut

my underwear of the dead

my hand-me-down teeth

and at the first supper club I light upon—three gins in—I say to this woman

Khayat is of Lebanese descent

No hell! no he ain’t she says

nearly hysterical in her insistence that no prez of ole mizz

could be a sandnigger

I ask her where do you go to church

Saint Johns she says

tell Father Hadeed I said hi

tell him I said Alhamdulilla

tell him the ghost of Bill Faulkner quoth to me

quail fly south in the afternoon

better pray often

better pray soon

for those students in ’64 crossing Lynch Street

on the way to Jackson State

white drivers speeding up

dubbed it “blacktopping”

how much shit can one people take

consider the white family walking down Ellis

carrying their groceries

too poor for even the most worn out hooptie

the youngest amongst them a little boy

—Hey y’all!—

totes among other items

a sweaty gallon of milk

that has burst a jagged seam in the paper sack

so that he cradles the whole mess

with both arms as if carrying a sick baby

and that was rough but

no one swerved to hit us

Jesus of the Confounderacy

Jesus of the Union

because I love my schoolmates

that never left

black white Pakistani

Choctaw Lebanese quadroons

women with hair piled to dangerous heights

that saved me from my youth

I love kibbeh and the swamp

I love the heat

O hellish dome as soon as I could

I packed my junk and was gone

gone in my ragged out Plymouth Belvedere

with its push button transmission

and sawed-off seatbelts

my face stinging like a stuck voodoo doll

red with the turpentine curse of that place

I especially did not love

on that particular day the Sergeant Major in the meeting

of non-commissioned officers

scheduling guard drills around MLK’s birthday

says shoot six more

we’ll take the whole week off

—oooh this sure is a tell-all!—

well yes though I don’t dare tell C. Leigh

after drill when we’re heading to his place

in the old neighorhood

where we’ll eat a free bucket of chicken because Monica still works at Popeye’s

and we’re going to watch Prince videos

and not drink beers

because for whatever reason we’re both sober

and on our way

everyone stares us down

like the only time they saw a black and a white guy

in a car together was when

they were cops

and I tell C. Leigh a dream I have betimes

I’m back at our old house on Hooker Street

always a black family surprised to see whitey

and I’m so white in this dream

you can barely see me

white as a polar bear’s pillow case

white as the ear fuzz

of the great Johnny Winter

but they see me and I see them seeing me

I say back then my bed was behind the table

here’s the notch I cut with a steak knife

when I was three

and for the first time—eyes wide—they believe me

the little girl her hand on her hip

says let me guess whitebread

grew up poor

wants to do some good

just what we need

Starbucks!

I say we were so poor I still get nervous in Starbucks

boo fricking hoo she says you still white

white as Gods white-ass golf balls

I say shoot me already

at which point her mother brings the gun

when she pulls the trigger the confederate flag pops out

the mother says just kidding you want some dinner

and this time when she shoots

the table is covered

with turnips cornbread little cups

of mayonnaise colored pudding

what you looking at she says better eat your dinner

and the three of us say an honest grace

grateful uneasy

Lord we say

we need wings to match the other wings

we don’t have

we need a bubbling we can hold

Yahweh Hot Rod Sky Talker

talk to us Mister Master

Cloud Cork of the Transcendent Cava

Amen and Amen

but when we open our eyes

the food has vamoosed

and we all cry out stumbling in that wilderness

if we had soup we could have soup and crackers

if we had crackers . . . but of course

we don’t because love comes on like a weight

and a claw and a sucker-punch

and in the case of Mississippi

gateway to this our under-country

history is the dish that leaves us skinny

petrified forest of narcotic tornadoes

Scratch’s bullwhip

devil’s dancefloor

crackhead’s cruise ship

backwoods Medusa with a kudzu afro

whose green gaze

sprouts branches from the fluted

columns of Beauvoir

O hold my hand brother

before we return

peckers in the dirt of our poke salad geography

redeemed as empty Faygo bottles

in the burned down shed

in the bamboo patch

behind Bilbo’s poolhall