As Heavy Rain by Susan Tepper

Blood seeding meadows 

of this country 

as heavy rain

Later

more than a hundred years

by—

in fly swamped heat 

on their bellies

kids hunt down

wild strawberries

with the same vengeance.

Weak and small on the vine. 

Scant, each year’s crop

feeding off the source.

A cycle

some call it, putting a lid on it;

others trumpet more blatant:

The war for independence.

Meaningless, we thought 

by the time the torn-up 60’s 

folded into a 70’s gasp; 

clutching to long held custom of 

abuse, slaughter, denial, no trial.

Hang me, brother, the joker

cries in the night; thick.

Slice with your hand horizontally, 

feel the hardened air 

booze flows its steady stream, the 

laughter around him gone shrill.  

Friend raised in Mississippi

a black man of business, now,

admitting he still gets the shakes

when 

once in a while

for work

he has to cross   

The Emmett Till Bridge

past sundown.

Susan Tepper is a twenty year writer and the author of nine published books of fiction and poetry. Her most recent are Confess (poetry from Cervena Barva Press, 2020) and a zany road novel What Drives Men (Wilderness House Press, 2019). Right now she’s in pre-production of an Off-Broadway play titled The Crooked Heart, re-written and adapted from an earlier novel, which focuses on artist Jackson Pollock in his later years.