The Kudzu Chronicles

—Oxford, Mississippi

1.

Kudzu sallies into the gully

like a man pulling up a chair to a table

where a woman was happily dining alone.

Kudzu sees a field of cotton,

wants to be its better half.

Pities the red clay, leaps across

the color wheel to tourniquet.

Sees every glass half full,

pours itself in. Then over the brim.

Scribbles in every margin

with its green highlighter. Is begging

to be measured. Is pleased

to make acquaintance with

your garden, which it is pleased to name

Place Where I Am Not.

Yet. Breeds its own welcome mat.

Why fright

when the ice

machine dumps its

armload of diamonds?

3.

The Japanese who brought the kudzu here in 1876

didn’t bring its natural enemies,

those hungry beasties sharpening their knives,

and that’s why kudzu grows best

so far from the land of its birth.

As do I, belated cutting, here without my blights,

without my pests, without the houses or the histories

or the headstones of my kin, here, a blank slate

in this adopted cemetery, which feels

a bit like progress, a bit like cowardice.

Kudzu quickly aped the vernacular—most folks assume

it’s native. Thus, it’s my blend-in mentor, big brother

waltzing in a chlorophyll suit, amethyst cufflinks.

When I first moved down South, I spent a year

one afternoon with a sad sack doyenne in Mobile

and her photos of Paris, interesting only because of her hats—

ostrich feathers, ermine trim, and pearl hat pins—

Oh, no, I don’t wear them now, they’re in the attic,

full of moths, wish I could get rid of them,

she said when I asked—and I, green enough,

Yankee enough, to believe this, said I’d like them—

and wherever I went after that, the Spanish moss

wagged its beards at me repeating her judgement—

pushy—that took a year to stop smarting—Hey lady,

where I’m from? They called me exuberant.

5.

September 9 and still so ripe

the bread molds overnight,

the mushrooms pop up like periscopes,

tree’s limbs wear hair nets—

really the frothy nests of worms—

the men have athlete’s foot,

the women yeast infections,

and even on Country Club Drive

they can’t keep the mold

off their cathedral ceilings

6.

Isn’t it rather a privilege to live so close to the cemetery that the dead can send us greetings, that the storm can blow bouquets from the graves to my front yard? Yes, the long spring here is beautiful, dusk brings its platter of rain to the pot luck and the centipede grass is glad and claps its thousand thousand legs, oh once last May I flung open my door to the rain-wrung, spit-shined world, and there it was on my welcome mat, red plastic carnations spelling: MOM.

I love Mississippi

later I tell D and A about it and they say

Neshoba County Fairgrounds

wasn’t that where the bodies of the civil rights activists were dumped?

           It was either

the winter of my father’s slow drowning in liquids clear like water

           but fermented

from the dumb skulls of vegetables—potatoes, hops, and corn—

           Or it was the winter

deep inside my body where my baby died by drowning

           in liquids clear like water

cut with blood—for weeks I walked, a tomb, a walking tomb.

           In the heartland I remember,

it was always winter, and if spring came at all it came like a crash of guests

           arriving so late

we’d changed into pajamas, thrown the wilted party food away.

           The western wind we’d waited for

hurled an oak limb, like a javelin, through the black eye of the trampoline.

           It’s not fair, my mother claims,

to blame a state simply because each morning sorrow patronized my kitchen

           and stood behind my barstool,

running her bone-cold fingers through my hair.

           But Mama, sorrow

hasn’t managed to track me here. Strict, honest Illinois: No more.

           Let me grow misty

in mindless Mississippi, a name that children chant between numbers

to measure out their seconds—

           ironic in this state that’s rotten

at keeping time, where, as Faulkner wrote, The past is never dead;

           it’s not even past.

           It’s true,

what Barry Hannah writes: In Mississippi, it is difficult to achieve a vista.

You betcha.

10.

Is that why we fuck so much?

Because we’re so hot to the touch?

It’s too hot to think, too hot for the paper

your fingers sweat through, we’re deep

in the dog days so why not take off

early from work, why not take off

the this and the that,

what’s a little more sweat from a bottle of Bass,

what’s a little more sweat from his hand on your ass,

why not stop, drop, and roll, why not climb up on top,

what a view of the moon, what a nice little pop,

arf arf—

arf arf—

arroooooooooooooooooo—

11.

Am I not a Southern writer now,

Have I not walked to the giant plot the kudzu wants but is denied,

Have I not paused to read the brass historical marker,

Have I not marked the twenty paces eastward with solemn feet,

enjoying my solemnity,

Have I not trod lightly on those who lay sleeping,

Have I not climbed the three steps to the Falkner plot, raised as a throne is raised,

Have I not seen his stone, the “u” he added to sound British,

affecting a limp when he returned from a war where he saw no action,

“Count No Count,” making his butler answer the door

to creditors he couldn’t pay, offering to send an autographed book

to pay his bill at Neilson’s department store

because it will be worth a damn sight more than my autograph on a check,

Have I not also been ridiculous, have I not also played at riches,

Have I not assumed the earth owed me more than it gave,

especially now that he lies beneath it, under this sod blanket, this comforter,

in the cedar-bemused cemetery of his own describing,

Have I not stooped beside his gravestone and sunk my best pen into the red dirt,

leaving it there to bloom with the others

beside the pennies, the scraps of lyrics, the corncobs and bourbon bottles,

because we often dress our supplications so they masquerade as gifts,

Have I not suspected Faulkner would scoff at this, at all of this,

but have I not felt encradled?

12.

Common names include

Mile-a-minute-vine

foot-a-night-vine

cuss-you-vine

drop-it-and-run-vine.

Covering seven million acres,

and counting.

Like the noble peanut,

a legume, but unlike the noble peanut,

forced into guerrilla warfare—

1945, U.S. government stops subsidizing Kudzu Clubs

1953, Government stops advocating the farming of kudzu

1960, Research shifts from propagation to eradication

1972, Congress declares a weed

1980, Research proves certain herbicides actually cause kudzu to grow faster

1997, Congress declares a noxious weed

Oh you can hoe it out of your garden, of course,

but, listen, isn’t that your phone?

Take heed, blithe surgeon,

resting your hoe

in the snake-headed leaves, and walking inside.

The leaves disengage their jaw bones—

cough once to choke the hoe halfway down,

cough twice, and it was never there.

13.

When I die here,

for I sense this, I’ll die in Mississippi,

state with the sing-songiest name

I remember, at five, learning to spell—

when I die here,

my singular stone will stand alone

among the Falkners and the Faulkners,

the Isoms and the Neilsons, these headstones

which fin down hills like schools of fish.

I’ll be a letter of a foreign font,

what the typesetter used to call a bastard.

and let them nibble acorns off my grave.

Then let the kudzu blanket me,

for I always loved the heat,

let its hands rub out my name,

for I always loved affection.