Two poems by Cameron Feeley
"Summertime," and "Gardenless Garden" The post Two poems by Cameron Feeley appeared first on Deep South Magazine.
Black News 
Summertime,
summer will come,
not the hot knife of heat floods, or wind death of the cancer belt,
but as the grass.
Lush jewel weed will sooth,
the green jeweled june bugs, little ribbon tied to their legs,
brightly colored cotton streamers,
It’s a little mean, but they don’t live long.
They will dance to the canopy.
Summer will come,
over orb weavers’ webs
a tail to the black-yellow, eight-legged stars
over rivers, over trails, over heads
The thicket of berries you eat
in sweaty handfuls,
before Nana tells you she doesn’t know what they are,
and look
…….You didn’t die.
So, stop your crying,
look,
……..you’re still not dead.
Gardenless Garden
It’s laid to rot,
……the suffocating green lushness.
So bright and vivid, I rub the sun from my eyes.
……I get sick, I’m so overwhelmed I vomit,
encased, enclosed.
…When I ride the train back home,
..I look into the thick foliage,
and think of who’s been dumped there.
Who’s been forced to disappear.
One of the reasons I’ve staked myself to this place:
the fluorescence, and its fight
kudzu, or kuzu
southern camellia, tsubaki
Give me back what you’ve taken over.
It’s sad,
….my need for you, for this-
gardenless garden,
placeless place,
all green and bite.
Maybe someday,
I’ll be in the dark muddy shade of your foliage,
laid to the land, too.
Cameron Feeley is a Southern-born poet currently based in Japan. Raised among creeks, red clay and kudzu-choked landscapes, their work remains rooted in the ecological and cultural terrain of the American South. They write about lineage, displacement, queerness and the uneasy intimacy between beauty and ruin. Their poems often center the Southern landscape as both inheritance and exile.
The post Two poems by Cameron Feeley appeared first on Deep South Magazine.
