Waking Past Midnight: Selected Poems

Waking Past Midnight collects elements of the rough South and life as a teenager on the Delta, tinged with threat and violence.In my late teens a pewter flaskRode my hip and I tucked in my right bootAn eight-inch blade crafted in dimpled bone.I didn’t court trouble, but knew cemeteriesWere full of coffins, their rubber gasketsRotting in the August humidity.In Greenwood, Mississippi, my maternalGrandfather primed his rage with bondedWhiskey. He loved to roll the bones, to shootThe jive with dock-hands behind the QuinnDrug Co. A blue .38 riding his hip, he passedThe collection plate odd Sundays, blackjackTucked in his breast pocket. Some devoutChurch-goer whispered how a white hoodAnd sheet haunted his bedroom closet.