1. Long back roads still rattle me. Make me fear being asked to step out— the night stick, the gun. Body turned to roadkill, left on the curb. Forgotten.
2. Pitch black nights the torch, deep fried flesh—tarred and feathered, watch bodies swing like gruesome drive in film.
3. Open fields leather whips, raking fingers through grass, blood, sweatlathered cotton, body parts left out for fertilizer.
4. Farm animals grazing buying and selling meat, ripping baby from mother for consumption, burning and branding, the slaughter, hanging out to dry like jerky.
5. Big plantation houses house slave and field nigga, maid and mistress, dinner service, bronze bodies expensive ornaments fresh off the auction block.
6. State fairs ‘Come see the hanging Negro,’ ‘Where can I place my bid?’ ‘This one has a strong back, good teeth, and broad shoulders.’ ‘Not the whole family. How much for the little boy and girl?’
7. Hunting season and wild woods running through forests, bullets grazing black skulls, branches cutting ankles, underground railroads, hiding under the creek from coon dogs, sniffing out the smell of a runaway.
8. The Cape Fear River the drowning, throwing bodies over the bridge to hide the evidence, the vanishing of whole families, how they threw us over ships like rotten catfish.
9. Boxing matches strapping black brutes fighting for bets, bare knuckle knocking out until unconscious for entertainment. Toasting to the tearing of flesh, smoking a cigar in celebration.
10. Southern belle and sweet tea smells like centuries of injustice.
11. Southern comfort tastes like privilege.
12. Southern hospitality sounds too unsettling to ever feel like home.