You receive the memories, the hunger,
and the dreams shiny as the eyes of madmen
before stately antebellum mansions,
even for the poor more than they were;
like lightning bugs stuck to a summer evening.

Patterns like footprints in the grass
of a barefooted run with June bug
on a string, like a child hugged in the arms
of motherhood, tied to a solid, hard-backed green,
the buzzing, broken as first sex in the back of a car.

And you remember the funny talk of poontang
in barber shops before the hunt begins,
the talk of  the remorseless chicken thief,
the hungry coon sought after in the night
out beyond the chinaberry tree, the mimosa
and crepe myrtle, out beyond even the dogwood

through the kudzu, hunted and smiling
from the pine tree, smiling at the dogs
pulled with chains from the moon-cut pine;
you remember that trapped and smiling, high-up coon,
you remember the hunger that would not cease, cease.