Smooth

Listen to my feet and I will tell you the story of my life.
~John Bubbles

Happy Poetry Friday! My first poetic impulse was...dark, but I searched until I found my second third fourth impulse, haha, and so here we are with a poem by Glenis Redmond about Peg Leg Bates.

I’m Fly
Glenis Redmond
For Clayton “Peg Leg” Bates

Some people got two good feet
and still don’t know what to do.
My smoothness makes the argument
for just one. My other leg be long gone
sacrificed to the cotton gin god.

They pinned my mangled mess down
to the kitchen table. Made me suffer more
under the hand of an unsterilized knife
with only a cotton bit to bare the pain.

I got up and spit out that terrible taste
of Jim Crow and pity. Spun my mama’s guilt
and worry into a dance that twists past
the neighbors’ prayer, gossip and stares...

read the rest here




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Salt City Verse has the Poetry Friday round-up. Thanks, Janice!