PALMETTO POEM: Down South

By Len Lawson

Five-and-dime. Antique store. Cash and
Carry. Drug store. Barber shop. Shoe shop.
Record store. Bridal boutique. Dive bar.

You are on your knees digging through
the catacombs of small business
all hemorrhaging green because

the law of the South says
you can’t get blood from a turnip
You wish you could flip down the

transparencies of time and see the old shops in their heyday
when dusty dirt roads exhaled clouds of anticipation and
alleys in the crevices of town felt no pressure to be firm asphalt

Up north the empty buildings are called abandoned
Down here they just look neglected
unattended like a trailer park princess

parading with her wand
dancing in her tutu
before the uncle’s rape

My old barber was also a butcher by day
He could chuck away at me like a lumberjack
or finesse me like a surgeon

I wonder if he dreamed of being a doctor
and moving to one of those metros up north
but then no one could mourn the mindless

cattle or lost knuckleheads
dying to be the next 40-ounce
waterfall on the firm concrete

like up north

Len Lawson is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee with poems appearing or forthcoming in Winter Tangerine Review, pluck!, Fall Lines, and elsewhere. He has received a fellowship from Callaloo Creative Writing Workshop. Len is Poet-in-Residence for Sumter County (SC) Cultural Commission and co-founder of the Poets Respond to Race initiative.