Waking Past Midnight collects elements of the rough South and life as a teenager on the Delta, tinged with threat and violence.
In my late teens a pewter flask
Rode my hip and I tucked in my right boot
An eight-inch blade crafted in dimpled bone.
I didn't court trouble, but knew cemeteries
Were full of coffins, their rubber gaskets
> In Greenwood, Mississippi, my maternal
Grandfather primed his rage with bonded
Whiskey. He loved to roll the bones, to shoot
The jive with dock-hands behind the Quinn
Drug Co. A blue .38 riding his hip, he passed
The collection plate odd Sundays, blackjack
Tucked in his breast pocket. Some devout
Church-goer whispered how a white hood
And sheet haunted his bedroom closet.