By Michael Tyler, EJS Poet-in-Residence
The soil of its soul is biggity cruel and unforgiving,
And the cracks across its crust are the scars of Dixie scorn.
Its ground has long been hostile to rueful cultivation
And its terracotta earth is chocked with petrified contempt.
Only rain with blended blood can make it ready for the sowing
And the much awaited reaping of a strange and pungent fruit.
And from the crushing and the tilling of burned and buried bones
Comes the fertilizing mulch its townsfolk treasure for their fields.
No punishing tornadoes, no retaliating floods,
Or swirling storms of fury, or spells of hellish heat
Have ever caused it to atone with heartfelt shame and full confession,
Nor brought its pride to pleading knees, to beg forgiveness for its sins.
Don’t let your senses be misled by its flower-scented air,
Or your caution be abated by its pie and pickle charm.
And be wary of the walks by catfish channels and sunfish streams,
And the laughter by the fire that hides the malice in the howl.
Nearly a hundred and fifty years it took to act with blank dishonor,
To ratify the clause within its just and hallowed hall.
So, where white magnolias grow to bloom the evil in their beauty,
Did Nina justly name her most rebuking song.
From the author:
When the grand jury in Pascagoula, Mississippi found no evidence of criminal conduct in the death of Nolan Wells, the familiar feelings of eviscerating insult and combustible rage consumed me. Just twenty-five days prior, I was reflecting on the 71st anniversary of the death of Emmett Till, who also lost his life in Mississippi.
For the hours that followed, well into the sleepless night and bloodshot-eye early morning, I felt compelled to write something about how I was feeling, and how I knew so many people like me, of cultural and moral kinship, were also feeling. Since no judicial body or officer in the state could find cause to indict anyone for his death, I decided to indict the entire state where white magnolias grow.
The poem has 20 lines, unmistakably identifying Mississippi for becoming the 20th state admitted to the Union. Its first line uses a word that is firmly established in Mississippi’s common vernacular: “biggity”. It also has 215 words, a number that tallied the horror discovered in a pauper’s field found behind the Hinds County Detention Center near Jackson in 2023.
Also, it wasn’t until 2013 — 148 years after the passage of the 13th Amendment, did Mississippi officially ratify the law into its constitution. Finally, the last line of the poem serves as the judge’s gavel slam, a reference to Nina Simone’s life-sentencing song, Mississippi Goddamn!, which she wrote in response to the killings of Emmett Till and Medgar Evers, who was also murdered in Mississippi.