Greg Stidham
New Epileptic
Stooping now
to retrieve a dropped pen
then standing again,
an act so ordinary
the brief passing
vertigo once
unnoticed now
triggers thoughts
of unruly neurons
plotting their next
choreography
the next slapstick
they'll direct
at my expense,
my pride,
perhaps even
my breath.
Mississippi Delta
Endless expanses of fields of cotton, rice and soy
stretch from the river to the horizon
where the crops touch the blaze of setting sun.
It is said the delta meanders from the lobby
of the Peabody hotel in Memphis,
to Catfish Row in Vicksburg,
the rich black soil giving off its river smell,
guitar picking instead of cotton picking,
the voices of the blues still seeping out the walls
of juke joints in Clarksdale, Batesville and
Helena. The blues born here a century ago,
where the fields flooded every spring,
and white-hooded cross-burning lynchers roamed
until just decades ago: this land remains alive,
like the catfish wallowing in the river's mud.