Magic City Gospel. Ashley M. Jones

Red, White, and Blue. Shoo Bay Do Bay Do Bay Do.”

       EATING RED DIRT IN GREENSBORO, ALABAMA

      I ate red dirt for the first time

      with Aunt Hattie—big, brown blind angel

      who listened to local crimes

      on her police scanner. Its monotone lullaby

      crooned all through the night, piercing, faithful.

      When she heard it was my first time,

      she sent us to the hill. We scraped it off, tried

      to ignore the ants and the strange, dull

      sour scent. Stealing dirt, a local crime,

      only punished by whatever was hiding inside

      our Ziploc bags: a pillbug, a ladybug’s broken shell.

      Back from the hunt, for the first time

      I realized how citified

      I really was, scared of something so full

      of local germs. But was it a crime

      to fear eating dirt? Finally, my Southern pride

      made me put it to my lips, resist the acidic pull

      of bile in my throat. And for the first time,

      I felt like a local, swallowing this bittersweet crime.

       NEM

      pronoun \nem\

      1. and them, especially in the American South

      A.

      You finally get the courage to use the word when you’re sixteen. When you finally wear a real bra and can count on your hips to fit into a skirt the right way. Your tongue is a bit looser these days—you even get the jokes when you’re talking with your mom and all the women in her family. When grandmother squeals out a dig at someone you don’t know, you find something slippery in it and laugh, finally, with the throat of a woman. Someone asks you who you went to the store with the other day. Mama’nem, you say. Inside, you tilt with excitement. You light up, a pinball machine of colloquialisms.

      B.

      At school, you’ve become a comedian. You’re quick with jokes about race—you’re the only black girl in most of your classes. It is easy to blend in and stand out. You offer opinions when they are required—during Black History Month, during the unit on the Atlantic Slave Trade, when you and the teacher are the only ones who can name a black poet who is not Langston Hughes. You have perfected what you call “the Klansman:” a short impression you pull out when there’s no more conversation amongst your peers. They are impressed with your feigned Southern accent. They are more impressed with how you wield the n-word. Me, Billy-Ray’annem gon’ round up some niggers, you say. You watch your classmates laugh. Their eyes bulge like hot dough.

       ADDIE, CAROLE, CYNTHIA, DENISE

       Amen, Alabama.

      Bring in the Dixie sun,

       cover us in the

      delicate, glassy sunshine

       erupting all over.

      Find us, fevered, in the

       glen, Jones Valley.

      Have you seen the churches with windows stained?

       Infinite steeples,

      just turn any corner. Do you

       know how we bleed, like Jesus?

      Loud vibrato

       melting the Sunday sky,

      new mercies exploding, dynamite,

       over our brown bodies.

      Pretty little ones, dressed in lace, beneath

       quivering old ones in hose and hats.

      Remember how 16th Street shook,

       symphony of fiery coughs

      that turned our Birmingham to blood.

       Under what God’s hand did we die like this?

      Villains, victors, what did you see?

       Wa wa watermelon, a chorus of coons,

      X’s on the eyes, a grim cartoon?

       Y’all come back now, hear?

      Zippety do dah till the day you die.

       TEACHING J TO READ

      I don’t know how to begin,

      how to explain that A means A,

      that B isn’t Beaver

      but simply B,

      the second drawing

      in a series of twenty-six.

      He is in the fifth grade

      and he can’t read about Dick or Jane.

      He spends his days

      finding new places to hide—

      in between book chapters, scraping ink;

      at the end of a punchline;

      on the lip of a carton of milk.

      I am useless, like an after-school special—

      here, there is no purple dinosaur,

      no sparkle in our smiles,

      no bell-toned music to montage this away.

      He finds pig in big

      and the way a fist can solve these things.

      He loses his name

      in the sprawling alphabet—

      the surest letter is the first: J.

      This is the dark curve

      that marks him,

      and, even now,

      I can’t remember the letters

      that follow.

       SAMMY DAVIS JR. SINGS TO MIKE BROWN JR.

      You’re clear out of this world, Michael. You’re a blueblack star.

      I’m ringing with the sound of your spit on the pavement,

      the shine of your blood. I look into your wet, gulping eyes

      and see my glass eye reflected, flatly in your pupils.

      I pour a whole note into each bullet hole.

      I string my song through you—

      straight seam to keep you for the next world.

      One chord of kisses for each of your upturned hands, Michael.

      One note per finger, the tsk tsk of your palms, cymbals holding sound.

      When my song is done, I will wait for you to sing,