The Inheritance I’m Cloaked In
From nine different bars in Hixson, Tennessee, to his grandmother’s cotton field, Collier’s poems map the Southern geography of memory and belonging.
Christian J Collier poetry. Black Southern poet. Black Southern poetry.
HIXSON GHAZAL
I can close my eyes now & identify my ghosts, those who’ve succumbed in Hixson.
Night feeds us time to breathe out regrets. Each of us honest without sun in Hixson.
On drizzling days, I forgive my body’s carelessness & praise each condom I’ve filled.
Each slim layer of latex stretched to keep me childless, deluged & outdone in Hixson.
An oriole flies into a pane of glass, then he does it again. Some animals refuse to learn.
I learned a loadable weapon was necessary to not find myself outgunned in Hixson.
The last thing we lose in life is the future. The ground bucks to be filled by something.
Under 3 AM’s watch, I smoke blunt after blunt—uneasy & brown-lunged in Hixson.
Dana Rogers strums her guitar & croons to a room filled with the drunk & alone.
I wish mine was a mouth filled with music instead of gravel vox & stout tongue in Hixson.
When I started drinking, the city spread itself open & wide. Nine bars became my home.
I loved each cell that made me Christian anytime I imbibed & was found dumb in Hixson.
Christian J Collier poetry. Black Southern poet. Black Southern poetry.
THE FADE
Saturdays, I’d park on the corner of MLK by five winos who’d beg
for loose change. A few dimes & pennies,
the difference between a bout of the shakes or worse.
What little I had in my drink holder,
the toll paid to walk unbothered & sit
in a taped-up, black leather chair before
a man who sold dope, mixtapes, the steady grace of his right hand.
Twice a month, he’d line me up
in a boxy room, fresh-cut hair sanding scuffed laminate floor.
The air, thick with r&b, an electric razor’s hum, someone
talking shit, lying about a new, nameless woman he’d made moan.
I lied to myself of being grown back then—twenty-two,
most of my cash gone to clubs, overpriced booze,
trying & failing to catch the favor of somebody fine.
I was too simple to picture a better way to pull myself through a life,
too unwell in youth to see past the flawed markers of my face.
Night’s end after night’s end, I slept certain
I needed another’s affirmation to accept I wasn’t ugly. I was
ugly when none came, so lost in my ignorant pate,
my wild, blooming mind cursed my parents for weaving my features
over rutted prairies of red & white tissue.
I look back lighter on the pride that always crusted over
beneath my sheeny, oiled scalp. On this hurtling rock,
nothing dies faster than beauty. What blessing to mature,
be undone then remade gentler by unspooling time.
THE BIRTHRIGHT
Every place I’ve been touched by
a good, clean palm is a door to my grandmother’s land
where her sleeping bones sweeten sun-chewed soil &
frying fish stings the eyes. My blood float
in that country where it’s always peak summer, so hot
even brown beer bottles sweat.
Her gospel, our story on my jasmine feathers,
rivering over & through me:
an inheritance I’m cloaked in & never remove.
Her rockless bed of dirt.
Her India green horizon.
Her swaying field of cotton.
Christian J. Collier is a Black, Southern writer, arts organizer, and teaching artist who resides inChattanooga, Tennessee. He is the author ofGreater Ghost(Four Way Books, 2024), and the chapbookThe Gleaming of the Blade, the 2021 Editors’ Selection from Bull City Press. His work has appeared inThe Atlantic,Poetry,December, and elsewhere.
Beautiful
The words of a poet are soul satisfying and a way to reconfigure our taught/learned thoughts….AKA undoing the negative aspects of certain social constructs.
You are appreciated
David