I-95 Kenly, NC

Even as a boy without a license
barely seeing over the dashboard,
I knew my mother never understood
how to properly use the interstate.

She’d pull down the long ramp,
then obeying some invisible sign,
come to a full dead stop, look both ways
then pull out when the coast was clear.

Maybe I could tell it was all wrong
by her agitation and anxiety,
or maybe the tell was in horns blowing,
or the screeching tires behind us.

The interstate was new back then,
we’d gone from rural dirt roads,
to gooey asphalt that bled in the summer,
to these concrete highways known by numbers.

My Mom was intimidated by the speeds
the sheer size and scope of it all,
the feeling these roads somehow belonged
only to vacationers and rough truck drivers.

I remember getting my hands on a map:
DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, to New York;
Raleigh, Charlotte, Atlanta, to New Orleans;
Nashville, Memphis all the way to L.A.

While other boys traced fingers over
daddy’s forbidden busty centerfolds
I traced my escape route, having faith in the
string of unseen cities like rosary beads.

When I could drive, despite mother’s cautions
I accelerated to merge, itchy for speed
threw myself onto the interstate, cause
these things, these things can take you places.

**

Tobacco Barn Outside Havana Cuba

There’s this little rest area
on the long empty highway
it’s just for foreign tourists
they entertain the buses all day
as we quickly come and go.

It’s supposed to be a quaint
little farm, with ox and pigs
I walk over to the barn
empty but still heavy with
the scent of years of tobacco.

I close my eyes and breathe
and for a moment I’m back,
back in North Carolina,
standing in my father’s barns.
pressing gold leaf into my face.

Odd how this foreign place
presses so tight against
my memories of home
takes me thirty years ago,
and a thousand miles away.

**

New York Tags

Mammy was one in a long line.
Black maids that my Mom
would hire during tobacco season,
to cook for the field and barn workers,
do our laundry, and clean the house.

A rather large woman
she’d waddle and sweat
over the hot stove and hot ironing board
her titties so massive
she used them as a folding table.
our clothes taking on her Gardenia perfume.

Then there was that day we took her home,
down that long winding dirt path
to the old homeplace she lived in
with it’s rusty tin roof, and old clapboard,
it’s hard dirt swept yard.

And there sat a big, gleaming gold Cadillac
and even from the back seat
the first thing I noticed
were New York tags with a gold chain frame.
Probably the first out of state tags
I’d ever even seen.

There were long uncomfortable moments
worried whispers in the front seat
“Mrs. Mildred, just wait a minute please”
and our maid slowly walked to the door.
We never actually saw the man,
but we certainly heard his voice.

Powerful and hard
yelling and screaming
as barefoot children stood in the front door
watching a scene beyond our eyes.
Then that one clear line, “Ain’t no mama of mine…
cleaning house for a white woman!”

Then only heavy silence,
my mother forgetting to breath.
she locked the doors, rolled up windows
looked out the back window,
trying to decide if she could back out,
make a hasty retreat in our LTD.

Then our maid walked back out to the car,
had to knock on Mom’s window, in which
my mother only yielded a small crack.
They talked with their mouths close to the opening,
like you’d talk to a friend in prison.
“Mrs. Mildred – I just can’t work for you no more.”

Never another word was ever said, never mentioned again,
but it was here I first realized something amiss
something under the surface, hidden in plain sight;
that made people nervous about things like New York tags.
And it would only be years later, years later,
that I realized that Mammy wasn’t this woman’s name.

**

Throwing Rocks at Mr. Batton

Southern Boys learn fast
who it’s safe to push and shove
who’s fair game to tease and taunt.

The education’s subtle
things not said, hand held whispers
funny looks and body language.

Mr. Batton’s unpainted farmhouse
all tall weeds and rusty metal roof
sat down a long path, off a dirt road.

We threw stones like hand grenades
long high arcs, exploding on the tin
attacking the unseen enemy within.

He walked stiff and limped
always looking down, shuffling
mumbling, talking to himself.

When we circled our bikes
one would always shove him down
as the others kicked dirt and rocks.

He always dressed nicely
in summer suits, bow tie, straw hat
old fashioned, even for an old man

I remember how the dirt clogs
would explode into red stars
on the white/blue seersucker stripes.

I cried at night, but not for him
that this was what I was to become
this was my fate, my future.

The curse of being born
gay in a proper southern family
violence and voltage your reward.

Better you mumble and stumble
better you be “cured”
than be an aberration.

This once proud handsome man
reduced to a cautionary tale
instruction for boys what not to be.

And telling us, his younger brothers
tell no one, trust no one.
escape while you can.