| Southern Lament |
| My family comes from the land of cotton- of thickly-buttered morning grits and barefoot toes stained with Virginia clay. I was raised by blackberry patches and fishing ponds ripe with mud and trout; by the hum of insects in sticky summer evenings and Presbyterian pastors whose Heavens lulled me to sleep in my daddy's lap. I have tasted the gifts of vegetable gardens, rich and watered by beads of sweat; known sweetened tea for mother's milk and granary mills my ancestors built. But those enormous white wrap-around parches leave little room for me now. My love is more misunderstood here than a northern dialect; the sin of my kisses has less to do with Sodom then it does the waste of hips to birth children and the sothern wedding I'll never have. |
| By Laura Brewer, GA |
| 2003 KarMel Scholarship Entry |
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