by Jeffrey Tucker
Marker 20 Restaurant
Hampton, Virginia
Southern I’m not never
saw muddied Gulf til
three California decades
passed my artificial drawl
shouts poseur dilettante
cracker come lately
I craved flags
draping my house one
from everywhere I’ve crashed
praise my world
weariness all
California freezing Utah
Costa Rica Mississippi
then I saw them
blanket a brown Confederate
cemetery tiny flags almost
ours but swollen white
field broad red
slash across bottom bars
and stars filling the corner
wind flicked dozens above
the flat Vicksburg river
and Mississippi’s flag
is exactly the exact except for
a blue top stripe
that fools no one
handsome but bothersome
to visitors my walls
still bare save dirt
where I prop feet
I could post other flags
but it’s wrong leaving
out Mississippi especially here
where people claim Southern
blood but it could be
Duluth I’m not seeing
it which is to say that
though I am no native
son no good old boy
I know your lunch is trash.
[More poems by Jeffrey Tucker]
[Check out Jeffrey’s back porch wisdom here]
