Lowcountry Blues

If I could feel sorrow
for a thing entire of itself,
it would be St. Helena Island.

Slowly submerging,
churning to grains,
hourglass cremains,
its slow death
diminishes me.

On a length of shadow,
cold, weightless,
dusking castles
staked in sand,
the Gullah Geechee
fill their slop pots
before it all goes bad.

We kill what is tiresome,
hide behind a heavy-handed
clock face, feast somewhere
between the thin skin of grace
and the eloquent slow death

of all that we have watered,
loved, and fed, waiting to be cropped,
plucked from a fallow garden,
this beautiful South Carolina blue.

Judas Kiss

I smell pea soup
in a can of green paint.
Perfume is an ice pick
between my eyes.
Baking bread is smoldering
cremains of pizza cheese.

It started

with a half brick to the nose,
courtesy of a spiteful child,
the deviated flesh soothed
with petroleum jelly,
only memories to follow:

July rain on baked earth,
mowed grass,
a freshly painted room,
a chlorinated pool
where I watched
the kiss of life wasted
on a girl about my age.

Poor girl, I imagined

the smell of death,
sour as spoiled milk,
livid skin, her lips,
sweet grape preserves.

Lifting my head to July rain,
I close my eyes,
taste deceit, flat
as a Judas Kiss.

June 29, 2025