After having heedlessly gone dancing on the street described below (and pictured above) this poet was presumed to be a whore, making her polite refusal of its owner’s brother’s abrupt advances grounds for her firing from the café at which she had until then been providing musical entertainment…
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Recorded Reading (4:13):
*****
Limited Wimmin
Now, Natchez, Mississippi
Is an unusual place
You get there driving two hours down
The hand-manicured Trace
And come to where a magic town
Is stretched your eyes before
The only Southern town not bombed
Or burnt during the Civil War
However, you may justly ask
Did they somehow avoid the fate
Of every other city
In secession at that date?
The answer to this little bit
Of hidden history
In the extreme affluence
Of its population be
For truth be told in those past days
The citizens of Natchez were
Worth more in liquid assets
Every capita there per
Than any other city the
Entire great nation in
And when they saw those Yanks
Prepare bombardment to begin
They sent to parley businessmen
Their fair town council from
To see if to agreement
There were ways which they might come
And must have sent some gentlemen
Who had the diplomatic touch —
‘Course this all happened way back when
So we don’t know too much
But somehow that ol’ Grant just up
And made his army elsewhere go
Left the town still standing
That’s about all that we know
Those antebellum mansions are
Still standing there today
And what is more the same
Old families still in them stay
One yet sees there three generations
Strolling hand in hand
Past soaring white facades and through
Lush gardens, great and grand
Plantations fan out from it
But the town’s just ten blocks wide
About a single mile from
Edge to edge and side to side
Great houses stand up on the rise,
Then on the other edge of town
Over by the river
Block-long Silver Street cuts down
To meet the dock, where riverboats
Full of tourists come to rest
That by numerous postcards
And gourmet coffee may be blessed
Well-meaning yearly travelers
Who bring much money to
The citizens of that sweet city
They have come to view
But do you think the ladies
Of Natchez’s better fam’lies love
To lurk among the little shops
That clean and neat area of?
Heavens! Oh dear, oh gosh, no,
Not on your ever lovin’ life!
The husband ever heard of that
And she’d no longer be a wife!
Because, you see, that dock was used
A hundred fifty years ago
By ~ you know ~ colored people,
To bring the rice bags from below
So to this very present day
All ladies of that place agree
In that sweet part of their small town
That they must never present be
Most have lived a lifetime
That same square mile within
Yet never once those tourist shops
And little sweet cafes been in
Somewhere in that reality
A lesson must, I know,
Be waiting to enlighten
A lucky someone through it go
Myself, I cannot get
From out behind my inner gaze,
Past my utter astonishment ~
I lost am in amaze!
It must be said, because it is
One hundred percent true
I’m just not sure, of those involved
Whom I would give most pity to
But I know that I would reserve
A generous portion indeed
For those limited women
Who must such strictures heed
*****
This poet/editor is physically disabled, and lives at a fraction of her nation’s poverty level.
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