Kali by David Madgalene published by Round Barn Press April 2009 (cover art Ed Coletti's Streetcar)
Mattie Sue
(from Kali)
Say I never knew a gal like you Mattie Sue.
Say you sure knew how to do the do.
No, I never loved a gal like I love you,
but, Mattie darling, no, you couldn't do right.
You had to go and pull out your knife.
Didn't have no money for the funeral home,
so me and my brother, yeah, we did the job.
We took you on down to the burying ground.
We dug us a hole and we laid you down.
Then we threw the mud all in your pretty face,
but not before I got me one last kiss…
Couldn't find no preacher say a prayer for you,
so I got me a Bible did the best I could.
Say “Jesus, sir, Mattie Sue didn't please you,
but I got something I want you to do.
Hear me, sir Jesus, Lord, hear me well—
If you can't take Mattie Sue in Heaven,
Send me straight to Hell.”
Then I went home and I got my shotgun.
I went and shot the white trash that shot you.
Say I shot his mama, shot his daddy too.
Aint no white trash mess with my Mattie Sue.
Say the posse gonna string me up tonight,
but, Mattie baby, I don't care to fight.
Sheriff leave me hanging but that's all right—
cause my brother he know what to do.
Comment Here on any of the above or below and read the comments of others too. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous" if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net if you have difficulty.
Elizabeth C. Herron's If Osiris
If Osiris
As if he had been dismembered
and reassembled by a team
of drunken surgeons, his skin ridged
with red welted scars reminded me
that once a god lived and died each year
in the round of earth’s growing cycle,
his severed limbs -- his feet and hands
and head and guts, his fingers and knees
thrown to the fields that the soil might be fertile.
You could take my heart and cut it into giblets
if you could make something of it,
if you could cast the twisted pieces of your own
with all that is salt and sunder between us,
if you could gather our dismembered lives
and make as good a harvest as the earth we eat.
elizabeth c herron
Comment Here on any of the above or below and read the comments of others too. Log in under "Name" or "Anonymous" if you like, but please be sure to sign some facsimile of your name. Actual name is best, but use what you like. Or email me at edcoletti@sbcglobal.net if you have difficulty.
8 Ed Coletti Paintings
I've decided to post these here because No Money In Poetry is not updated as frequently as the P3, and therefore constitutes a less changeable place to send folks who want to view my paintings.
""Quetzalcoatl," "Rare Bird," "Firebird," "Rose Window XII," "Paddle," "White Spaces" and "Nafisa"
