Page 20 - SOUTHERN VOICES_2020

“Powerlines were covered in ice. All of my flowers, even my perennials. My car had three feet of snow piled on top of it, and I had to climb out of a window and shovel the snow out from behind my door, so I could walk in and out. It was terrible. Terrible.”
Sky dramatically finished her pie and put her
fork down. “I don’t believe you. It don’t snow in Mississippi.” She sucked the inside of her cheek and a pondering look flooded her face. “I mean, unless you count the cotton.”
Mrs. Jennings flexed her fingers, “Cotton? Pardon?”
“Yeah, the cotton. It’s so beautiful! Sometimes, Daddy takes me to run through it.”
“Beautiful ...,” Mrs. Jennings whispered.
The memories hit her in waves.
She had been born into a time in the South when
there hadn’t been anything to do but pick cotton.
She went to the fields as soon as her hands had been capable. It hadn’t been terrible, but it certainly hadn’t been fun. The burrs were fine once, twice, but after you’d picked hundreds of pounds of cotton, your fingers would bleed, staining the cotton white. To this day, scars still littered her fingers.
When she was six, they had seen it fit for her to chop cotton. That work was worse, and it was made worse by the fact that she wasn’t paid for the work. Chopping cotton hurt; if picking cotton was a scratch, chopping it was a bullet wound. She could almost feel the sun beating down on her back.
For Mrs. Jennings, these memories were like bruises; they hurt, but it was easy enough to forget that they were there until you bumped into it, and there was nothing left to do but poke at them, prod at them, and wait quietly for them to fade again.
So, as tears wet her cheeks, and Sky’s unmarred hands covered her own asking why, she responded quietly, “Because it makes me so happy that you can look at cotton and see something beautiful.”r
Lonely Road
Second Place—Painting
Ellen Overstreet
Acrylic
Song of the Urban Southerner
Davan Reece
I grew up south of the Mason Dixon,
A victim of the smothering sun
With sweat bleeding through corduroy jeans.
I loathed it.
Tried as I might, I never found my truth.
I didn’t find solace in the hard work
Of those who came before me.
But I appreciated it;
It bred the wild ambition that runs through me today Like red blood cells coursing through my veins;
But it wasn’t for me.
I have a distinct Southern drawl
That signifies the rolling hills of the Tombigbee From which my family built a name,
But my accent nor my dialect has an influence
On the way my life is headed.
I live in the most developed area of the state,
Yet I still find myself searching and yearning, Clamoring for a life that I don’t have.
I have renounced the way my ancestors lived—
Off the land and off the grid—
Yet I have held on to the dance of their tongue, Perhaps as a pay of respect
Or perhaps as a way to build my own truth.
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