This week's Poet of the People is Kimberly Simms Gibbs. She is South Carolina upcountry poetry. She sees with an eye of southern cornbread sopped in pork drippings gravy. If you want to feel the Carolina hills and mountains read Kimberly Simms Gibbs.
Kimberly's literary voice is rooted in the Southern tradition of storytelling. Her passion for poetry from both the page to the stage has led Kimberly to garner titles such as former Carl Sandburg NHS Writer-in-residence, National Poetry Slam ‘Legend of the South’, TedX speaker, co-founder of CarolinaPoets, former Southern Fried Poetry Slam Champion, and award-winning teaching artist. In her first full-length collection from Finishing Line Press, Lindy Lee: Songs on Mill Hill, Kimberly chronicles the lives of textile workers in the Carolinas with historical accuracy and imaginative insight. Ron Rash, the award-winning author of Serena, says about Kimberly: "she writes with eloquence and empathy about an important part of Southern history - too often neglected."
Trespassing after the Hysterectomy
The Lily-of-the-Valley
pearly bells tremble
the way a child’s mouth brims
with laughter.
Daffodils
headless green arms gesture
split-hearts subterranean
leaves blackened.
Mole,
how sweet is your tongue
after your feast of bitter
tulip daughters?
Dark earth,
how do you embrace the emptiness
of your bloomless womb
your crumbling tubers?
Lady Slipper,
my gloved hands long to plant
while your tendrils more exotic
unfurl sharp leaves, pregnant blossom
beneath the last living hemlock.
Homestead
But nothing is solid and permanent.
Our lives are raised on the shakiest foundations.
– Ron Rash, One Foot in Eden
A bolt of barbed wire, black with age,
hints the way, jutting from the undergrowth
like a wizened digit— the post long since decayed
and lost to the crumbling host of litter.
This sunken corner is a garbled message
till we catch a tree pierced with another barb.
A stone pile murmurs, entangled with the metal.
This forest expands in every direction.
Our eyes can see no horizon beyond it.
Mountains surge as we weave
up and down valleys, creeks, and ravines.
Eighty years: a forest has fallen and regrown.
Homestead cleared, tilled, planted, harvested
then reclaimed by this hummocked beast.
We follow the ancient line back to a single
hearthstone and the outline of a foundation.
A toppled stone wall, a brown bottle.
All around us: a forgotten fence, an outpost of the past.
Wild Green Soup
Newberry Cotton Mill Village
South Carolina 1924
Fingers of frost stretch across the windows.
Seasoned wood crackles in the wood stove
while I stir the last salty pork knuckle
with a handful of beans, wild greens
into a stock pot just off the boil.
Fall's harvest now a collection of empty jars;
the cupboards breath -- dust, dead moths.
Each stir is more a wish as the day considers
getting warm, sweet herbs summon cravings.
Morning casts its pink sap over frost-risen clay
as I shepherd this thinly-feathered brood
towards the cotton-strewn spinning room.
Today we will piece broken strings, weave
cotton scraps to make them something whole.
Liddy Lee Songs on Mill Hill (Finishing Line Press, 2017)
Machine Tool Salesman
Bill run that grinder fo ten years
Machine bigger than a brown bear
in Manny's stretched machine shop
in the flats of South Carolina.
The metallic cold milled slack snow
big sloppy flakes. The guys put on
their coats and stuck out their tongues
for the rare southern crystals.
Scraping together snowball heaps,
they watched the yard go dark and drank
black coffee. They stomped their feet
and left their coats on cause the shop
was so cold. That year so metallic.
That's how it happened, the coat.
Bill knew better, but ten years
you get so easy. The machine caught
him-- metal grinding machine --instant.
I sold them that grindernew.
Just horrible, he had two little babies too.
Took a week to get him out of the wheel
but it still ran. Can't keep a machine
something like that happens. I sold
it down the coast. Just horrible, two little
babies too and that year so metallic cold.
Summer Swagger
Late August, we are still free summer children.
We run over the rocky banks laughing in some
chase game; muscles flex, tense, stretch, climb
the steep --- dig fingers into cracks, wrench ourselves up.
Mountain expanse of water calls to us. My skin
tingles with nervousness as I look down thirty feet.
"Take my hand," you tender, "We'll jump together."
Wind races around my feet! We send out seagull wails,
steal breath for the plunge. My body is a scream!
Down, down forever in bubbles, then buoyant, silent,
We are carp pulling ourselves up through the water.
We burst back into heat, hollowing out triumphant bellows.