MAGIC CITY GOSPEL
Copyright © 2017
Ashley M. Jones
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
First printing, January 2017
Book design: Meg Reid
Proofreader: Rachel Richardson
Printed in Dexter, MI by Thomson-Shore
Cover Painting © A’Driane Nieves
Droid in Orbit, 2015
TEXT Adobe Garamond 10.5 / 15
DISPLAY TT Chocolates 15/13.4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Jones, Ashley M., 1990- author.
Title: Magic City Gospel : poems / Ashley M. Jones.
Description: Spartanburg SC : Hub City Press, 2017. Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016029313 | ISBN 9781938235269
Classification: LCC PS3610.O595 A6 2017 | DDC 811/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016029313
186 West Main St.
Spartanburg, SC 29306
1.864.577.9349
for Donald, Jennifer, Monique, Jasmine, and Julian
for Birmingham
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Sam Cooke Sings to Me when I Am Afraid
(I’m Blue) The Gong Gong Song, or, America the Beautiful
Eating Red Dirt in Greensboro, Alabama
nem
Addie, Carole, Cynthia, Denise
Teaching J To read
Sammy Davis Jr. Sings to Mike Brown, Jr.
Rammer Jammer
Sonnet for Sopping
Mock Election
Prayer
In The Beginning, There Was A Sound
The men come for Emmett and Tamir and Michael and Eric and John and Trayvon and…
De Soto, Discoverer
De Soto Leaves a Negro
God Speaks to Alabama
Salat Behind Al’s Mediterranean and American Food
Birmingham Fire and Rescue
Robert Chambliss Lays the Bombs
The first time I heard about slavery
Viewing a KKK Uniform at the Civil Rights Institute
What the Glass Eye Saw
slaves for sale
Elegy
How To Make Your Daughters Culturally Aware and Racially Content During Christmastime
Poem for Revolution
What It Means To Say Sally Hemings
spin•ster
Alabama Recipe Box: Cornbread, 1862
List of Famous Alabama Slaves
Ingredient list: black girl
The Ballad of Pearl Bailey
Corn Silk Barbie
Gregory Hines comes in a Vision
Birmingham Fire and Rescue Haiku, 1963
Symphony of God—A Hymn to Our Jesus
The History Books Have Forgotten Horace King
On Martin Luther King Day, A Noose Is Hung On A Tree In Blount County
Virgin Mary, Re-Imagined
Happiness
Gospel of the Grits
Coming of Age
Sojurner Truth Speaks to Her Daughter, 1843
Riddled In the Heart of Dixie
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
NOTES
SAM COOKE SINGS TO ME WHEN I AM AFRAID
Sam Cooke plays on the cassette deck in our Nissan Sentra. I am strapped like a parachuter in my booster seat. It is Saturday night. We are travelling from grandma’s house in Bessemer, having waited until the night’s third episode of “Walker, Texas Ranger” to leave for home. I am scared because I am not touching my mother. Sam Cooke is crooning about a party or a lost love or a change coming, and I’m afraid to die. Tonight, Alabama doesn’t feel like home—it is too dark to see and the alleys beckon our little car to them. Dad knows all the shortcuts because he’s a fireman, and I wish so hard for the interstate with lights and its fast, homeward promise. I wish for our little home and all my toys, even the ones that scare me at night. I wish for morning, when I will eat collard greens and cornbread with Mom. I wish for playtime with Monique and our blue couch that is a jungle, that is Pride Rock, that is a spaceship. Sam Cooke is painfully singing. He’s screaming. I can barely breathe behind all these straps—I am straightjacketed and trying to understand the hurt in Sam Cooke’s voice, and why does grandma never get up from her easy chair? Why does she look out at us like we are this night—like we are something she will never quite touch? Even when she laughs, why does she still look sad? Why have we not made it home yet? If I close my eyes and reach for sleep, can I make us teleport home? Sam Cooke, give me the answers instead of your steely wail.
(I’M BLUE) THE GONG GONG SONG, OR, AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL
Ike Turner sailed the ocean blue in nineteen hundred sixty-two.
