V E R S E ❦ I M A G E

There are two kinds of barbecue in the known universe: Wilbur’s Style, and all the rest.  Head east on 70 past Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base and the aroma captures you about the time Goldsboro is fading in the rearview.  Pork shoulders and hams cooked all night over a hardwood fire (at Wilbur’s they favor oak, not hickory); basted with the secret Wilbur’s sauce (I’ve tried to recreate it – boil cider vinegar with salt, black pepper, white pepper, red pepper, nothing else, and you’ll come pretty close); most of the fat trimmed off (but not all), chopped, and heaped on a plate with field peas, turnip greens, and hush puppies.  OK, OK,  I’ve given up eating meat, but I can still savor the memories, can’t I?

When I asked folks a few weeks ago to come up with a name for a new poetry form that embodies the essence of the South, sweet tea and barbecue were mentioned more than once.  I kind of like Arthur Powers’s suggestion –  Sou-Ku – and the one Ruth Moose has come up with sounds more than Japanese – Sentea.  Do they still sell Nestea?  But in the same way that our Southern Sentence Poem is a poetic form all our own, I think its name needs to be wholly ours as well, and not beholdin’ to some 3-line cryptogram.  Especially when you see the examples folks have sent: we are clearly opening ourselves to the Southern Loooong Sentence Poem.

So I’m still hoping to hear from you with a great name.  And keep sending those poems . . . !

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Once again, here are the elements of a Southern Sentence Poem:

1     It is a single SENTENCE.
2     A word or phrase has to PLACE the poem in the American South.
3     It requires a reference to the PAST.
4     It captures something of Southern CULTURE.
5     It ain’t got none of them damn Yankee semicolons.

Here are several that people have sent me:

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Arthur Powers

I stand on Polk Street
looking East over Oakwood cemetery
and watch late afternoon sunlight
sepia the Confederate headstones.

.     .     .     .     .

Diana Pinckney  – The Garden Party

Aunt Blanche’s yard dripped pink
punch and azaleas, offering shrimp

sandwiches, ham biscuits, cucumber
rounds and cheese wafers so yummy,

yet not a crust in sight on the scalloped
linen, daffodils and petit fours abundant

for family and friends so chummy,
invited to honor and bless the newly

engaged couple, the bride
and groom dreamy as budding

dogwoods with no one batting
an eye that the hostess batted hers

from her second story bedroom
window, having sampled more

than her share of the punch,
forcing Uncle Edward to take charge,

his large hand now patting the key
in his seersucker jacket while

Aunt Blanche, bejeweled in her silks,
nodded and waved, greeting and calling

down to all, Have a good time, ya’ll,
then dipped as she sipped

more of her own pink sweetener.

.     .     .     .     .

Jane Theis

On our evening walk, the Crepe Myrtles,
bowing and dripping from that day-long shower,
nodded us down the mossy path
where the ramps came up last spring.

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Ruth Moose   –  Shadow Tag

Run, run

Feet                      freeze

Harwood Street, Woodland

stop

Dew cold grass

In the barefoot nights        hold

Bee stings, wasp stings, hornets,

sweat flies                   stay

Tobacco juice, sweet snuff stuff

Childhood pain of

loss.

[Editor’s note – Ruth’s poem had wonderfully complex formatting which I can only partially reproduce on this verpfluchte WordPress blog.]

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Beth A. Cagle   –   Story Tellin’ at ‘Possum Trot Diner

Laughter of square-shouldered
uncles erupts
deep in my throat as a
bucking mule jumps
out of me, hoofing his
hopscotch in corn,
braying by grandfather’s
elderly oak,
leaving my youthful dad
caught on the clothesline,
dangling with overalls
rolled to his knees.

[First version published in The Blind Man’s Rainbow, Fall 2003]

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