southern soil

Chelsea Snow

for Quentin Compson

Father gave it to me, not that i will see passing time
but instead suffer as a prisoner to their honor,
or lack thereof. this watch, it is my eternal
pendulum, an awful awareness of a push
toward the static, complete damnation,
no drop of muddy, soothing liquid.

he only knows an amber liquid
and the mausoleum of hope: ¬¬¬time.
my lone inheritance is this damnation,
a desperate desire to preserve their honor,
to conquer my devastating virginity, a push
that trusts not in the future but the bleak eternal.

Caddy is light, lovely, yet fleeting and not eternal.
her hips lapped, licked by the murmur of liquid.
but this stagnation leaves no strength to push;
my garden replaced by the tick of time
and this unfruitful pursuit of honor,
no prospect of elected damnation.

it’d be the worst sort of damnation,
us—¬¬¬¬¬¬¬–together with nothing but eternal
pleasure. i could be the shame on our honor,
and Dalton Ames, he would drown in the liquid
of his mother’s loins, before even knowing time.
i’d laugh to see him die with little more than a push.

this place, Jefferson, this land: it is the ultimate push
that’d drive a man to madness, to perfect damnation.
i know because the South is doomed, lost to time,
alteration. women are ghosts, wandering eternal
without the recollection of life or liquid,
pleading our greedy grasps for honor.

but this inborn reverence for honor,
the glory of a fallen dynasty, it’s a push
and desolate longing, woven into the liquid
of our blood. i will always praise this damnation,
even when i unloose myself with pity into the eternal,
i will know that bondage is not chains, but soil and time.

moving over me, the liquid covers my shame and my ache for honor.
now then, what’s time? when i’m left with nothing to pull or to push,
bells ring for my damnation, each ample clang beckoning the eternal.