On September 5, 2014, NPR ran an by critic Juan Vidal titled, “Where Have All the Poets Gone?” which questioned whether American poets still produce political work, and suggested that “literary [political] provocation in America is . . . at a low.” Because I find this assessment of contemporary American letters to be very incomplete, I wanted to take the opportunity to create a dialogue on the subject by curating a series of compelling political poems from contemporary American poets. I christened this series “Political Punch” as an affectionate reflection on the cocktail of poets who decided to honor me with their participation in my little Infoxicated Corner; it was intended to celebrate the glorious mix of poetics, voices, and life experiences all being shaken and stirred into a sense of community and conversation, being distilled into burning gulps of experience for the reader. Leaving aside all the boozed-up metaphors, it was also intended to celebrate my experience of American letters, in all their willingness and ability to pack a political punch.
Today’s poem, by Yolanda J. Franklin, discusses the American South’s ugly legacy of racially-motivated violence and oppression. We carve our homes out of the natural world in the name of civilization, yet the natural world bears silent witness to a saga of human actions that are as uncivilized as they are unnatural. “If Trees Could Talk” suggests that, although certain real-life, contemporary symbols of alleged civility (e.g., a state flag) may celebrate a shameful legacy of hurt and hate, there are other aspects of our world that render a clearer judgment, born of objectivity, longevity, and natural law.
If Trees Could Talk
What if trees could talk of origins, talk
of surnames, talk of hand-tied nooses
to a gin fan anchor? Could talk
of killing seasons and each unremark-
able black body fertilized in southern soils,
could a panacea correct history? Blame
it on whoever you like, just survey
and interview the landscape, trouble
the unflinching stench of my eighty-year
old mother’s memory of whispers
and nicknames surrounding her Grand
Bill, a freedman in Wakulla,
undocumented, yet registered to carry
a musket. I want to hear their voices,
a Blitzkrieg of revolutionary petunias
set afire the Confederate flags that hang,
still like Scarlett’s draperies over
Florida and corners the Mississippi
flag in applause of the trouble
that still tends to crop up around here.
Yolanda J. Franklin’s work is forthcoming or has appeared in African American Review, Sugar House Review, Crab Orchard Review’s American South Issue, and The Hoot & Howl of the Owl Anthology of Hurston Wright Writers’ Week. Her awards include a 2012 and 2014 Cave Canem fellowship, the 2013 Kingsbury Award, two nominations from FSU for Best New Poets (2013 & 2014). She is the recipient of several writing retreat scholarships, including a summer at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Squaw Valley Community of Writer’s, Postgraduate Writer’s Conference Manuscript Conference at VCFA, the Callaloo Poetry Workshop in Barbados and Colrain’s Poetry Manuscript Workshop. Her collection of poems, Ruined Nylons, was a finalist for the 2013 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Award. She is also a graduate of Lesley University’s MFA Writing Program and is a third-year PhD student at Florida State University.
