The Reverend Isiah Thompson’s House is black

The kudzu blanket is a thief, brash in the dark

SingDead and Sho Nuff

Climb to the top of Alligator Mound,

they watch the Homecoming Parade

There is a road that leads to other fields,

That steam in the morning

but at dusk,

The fields watch you in the memory of light

like a sick person in a bed

They can see the river and they can see the parade,

SingDead and Sho Nuff,

they brought snacks to the mound,

The town is poor

The tuba bumps the drummer and the order is ruined,

the parade goes on like it was dragged by horses,

The river is a tramp; like all young men, he once had plans

And dreams, but they came to nothing so he
just keeps rolling

There were fat girls, bearing flags that droop,
the girls carry them like they are going to the junk yard

An idiot runs like a figure eight, like a snake, banging the symbols

SingDead and ShoNuff know,

That beneath them in the wet soil,

are some bones of yanks, saints, Choktaws;

The town is poor but it once was rich,

most may have forgotten,

or they remember only in rage or in dreams,

that the color of the faces in the town

still reminds the world of death