Alexandra Melnick
Mississippi’s Place in the Circles of Hell
They say
they burned sodomites at the stake
with glee and joy and as the fire rose up
the fire down in their parts where it felt like wind rushing,
the same desire when you see a young cowherd or a beautiful woman washing her hands for her lady, water running down worn sinks the breaths and the sighs of sleeping children.
As the sodomites burned, the crowds laughed and sang and marveled at the feelings awoken in their bodies,
assured of heaven.
It’s the same here.
“Thank God for Mississippi”
“Thank God for Mississippi”
“Thank God for Mississippi”
as we kill our children,
burning the delta’s land stakes and blue and pink sunsets like missing and kissing mouths
moths drawn to the flame preciously and precisely because it will put us out.
Our leaders condemn and burn Mississippi in search of the sanctity of heaven,
assured that never expanding Medicare abortion rights education paving the roads
would be what God wanted, that this is their ticket into the (e)yes of the lord.
However,
However,
However,
the country also glories, extols, laughs, chuckles, blesses,
because our pyre must mean they are getting into heaven too,
that this is a good thing a holy thing
because without Mississippi, you would be there too.
The joy they feel at the immolation of headlines is the joy
the peasant woman felt all the way down to her feet, worn and tired from the field, cracked like the rows of wheat and lines like wet dirt traces left on the ground after the rain skimming the perimeter of her body from her edges to her face,
when she saw a man be burned alive.
—Submitted on 04/23/2020
Alexandra Melnick is an educator and writer living in the Mississippi Delta. An alumna of Millsaps College and University of Mississippi, her work has appeared in Teaching Tolerance, Geez Magazine, Rewire, and The Dead Mule School.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.
If you enjoyed today’s poem and you value What Rough Beast, consider making a donation to Indolent Books, a nonprofit poetry press.