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Mississippi

Larry Griggs at Booker’s Place. Greenwood, MS.

Repast

In Jim Crow Mississippi, speaking out cost a black waiter his job. Now he is immortalized in poetry and song.

Ed Harris (as Dr. Bill Perch) and Amy Madigan (as Susan Perch) in The Jacksonian, which premiered in February 2012, at the Geffen Playhouse, Los Angeles, directed by Robert Falls. (All photographs by Michael Lamont)

The Jacksonian [private]

CHARACTERS (In order of appearance) BILL PERCH, a dentist and motel resident  ROSY PERCH, daughter of Bill and Susan Perch  EVA WHITE, a waitress and motel maid FRED WEBER, a motel bartender SUSAN PERCH, wife of Bill Perch, mother o [...]

Kin

He has the surname that suggests
a contested kinship: Jefferson—

Congregation

Somewhere in the post-Katrina wreckage and disarray of my grandmother’s house, there is a photograph of my brother Joe and me, our arms around each other’s shoulders. We are at a long-gone nightclub in Gulfport, the Terrace Lounge, standing before the photographer’s airbrushed scrim—a border of dice and playing cards around us. Just above our heads the words HIGH ROLLERS, in cursive, embellished—if I am remembering this right—with tiny starbursts. 

Tower

This week they are painting
the North Gulfport water tower.

Watcher

At first, there was nothing to do but watch.
For days, before the trucks arrived, before the work
of clean-up, my brother sat on the stoop and watched.

Prodigal II

I wanted to say I have come home
to bear witness, to read the sign
emblazoned on the church marquee—