Fury Stung

Faulkner, I fear, has taken the South for himself.
If I want to write, I will have to become a Northerner,
a lobster fiend, sulking along the cloudy coasts
of Maine. Or perhaps I will acquire a taste
for Rhode Island scallops, buttered and white,
the closest you can come to eating a human earlobe.
I will learn to stop resenting snow
for muffling the sound of rapture. I believe
it’s important to know the texture of inferno,
and the South knows nothing else. When snakes
tangle during twilight, some part of me sweetens
at the clash of fangs. Shamed, I roast
like an oiled cob in the absurdity of this place:
sugar in the cornbread, the catfish, the undersides
of our skin, always twitching with parables.
There was once a man who climbed the water tower
to heaven, the great celestial methadone clinic.
There was once a bullfrog whose groans
could summon Beezlebub. There was once a nation
of people, scorched pink, who could never be forgiven,
not by anyone. All of this, we begrudge. We pin the blame
on the nearest billy goat. We do what we’ve always done,
aiming the oyster knife upwards, marveling
at the stars with their gonads, pockmarked and bountiful,
savoring their promise: wrath everlasting.