M.A. Schaffner
Travels in the Deep South
De Soto kept looking for gold and the Indians
kept passing him on. Always the next tribe over
had what he wanted and sometimes they had something -
corn, women, dogs - but never fabulous wealth, which was all
he could think of wanting from Georgia, not
stucco city walls and dirt pyramids, just wealth
beyond river pearls and pyrites. On the flip side,
they said the same thing about cannibals, too -
always the next tribe over; in that next tribe
the pots would simmer with dog meat or deer, sometimes
possum or squirrel, never a human shin bone or skull,
not through Alabama and Mississippi or beyond.
And you can drive there today, go for barbecue
and minimum wage light industry, and natives
still stand warily in the frayed shade of pines,
the air acrid with pitch, and will give directions
to whatever you want only not here, mister,
but them folks in the next town, you might try with them.
Page(s) 9
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The