Katherine Duckworthfrom The Silted Bank
South of Cairo, it drops significantly.
That there is no bottom! Just ambient mud and living water
That the glacier carves a daughter on the Arkansas side
That the chickens fight over a piece of brie early on a Sunday morning
That the Spanish used the Ojibwe word Misi-Ziibi meaning Great River
And the Choctaw, Mishaz Sipzokni meaning Beyond Age
Fleabane does work, it seems, to deter the biting insects.
That Mississippi was played in Welsh prison yards.
That male Red-Throated Hummingbirds seem to move in military formation
Johnny, get your regiment up
That the gins, and
That the data centers
are constructed in sections of sheet iron and in a week’s time
That the living Soto may have only crossed it once before his army of peasants wrapped and sunk him
That the bagasse burns for miles, a mythological Karo.
The red-clay subsoil already had begun to peer above the loam
Talk from the middle english tale, old english talu meaning series, or calculation. Teller of an account at
the silted bank
from the Italian banca, meaning table, to the french banque, a counter
and the Scandinavian banki or bakki, strictly geographical.
Katherine Duckworth is a poet from Tennessee. She is the author of Mexia (Roseffern), The Soda Can Forever (Roseffern), and Slow Violence (Beautiful Days).
Talk from the middle english tale, old english talu meaning series, or calculation. Teller of an account at
the silted bank
from the Italian banca, meaning table, to the french banque, a counter
and the Scandinavian banki or bakki, strictly geographical.
Katherine Duckworth is a poet from Tennessee. She is the author of Mexia (Roseffern), The Soda Can Forever (Roseffern), and Slow Violence (Beautiful Days).