Beke Boy

Béké Boy

“Light in August was originally
about white people: Lena Grove,
Gail Hightower, and Byron Bunch.”
—Aliyyah I Abdur-Rahman, “White
Disavowal, Black Enfranchisement,
And The Homoerotic In William
Faulkner's Light In August,”
The Faulkner Journal
10-01-2006

he be a béké boy—
a kid of the dinge delta
creole whitey hustler.

morne shack his home—
marooned in the swamp
he be quimbois queer.
______________________

french-speaking carib dinge delta jive:
who refused servile labor: to flee to the
swamp or bayou
morn: term for a hill or small
mountain in the Antilles
quimbois: objects and practices
of west indian sorcery or witchcraft.
__________________________

born merely subchief—
a mingo, one of 3 boyz
on his mother’s side.

the man, the chief—
hereditary landowner
male side of family.

the béké boy sneaky—
ceaseless darting glances
all-embracing, animalesque.

clytie’s kid got by—
his father on the body
of his own daughter.
___________________

damned impudent—
wiseass just asking for it
cute young murderer.

“don’t you see?”—
this whole land, all of it,
the deep south is cursed!”

“white and black both—
whom it ever suckled lies
under the delta curse.”

the unmistakable way—
the land lies open like an
open door, abandoned.

______________________

no body lives here—
not anymore, the dusk,
the dead delta darkness.

even the jasmine smells—
spiraea, honeysuckle dead,
rotting mausoleum magnolias.

verisimilitude of tediousness—
no escape even for white trash
tallahatchie trailer courts.
_______________________

cheap shoddy music—
cheap white flesh for sale
naked legs up in the tv night.

delta darkness heat made—
thicker by imminence of sex
harsh labor marooned land.

crooning, welling up—
submerged passion of the
creole race, nothing, everything.

motionless uprush of it—
strong constant dinge downflow
of the pines and dogwood.
______________________

unfolding beneath him—
like a map in slow-motion
slow groaning ejaculation.

flowing down by the levee—
thru cane fields and woods
umbilicus uncoiling down

circumcising the north—
outlining it with the contours
of the missouri muddy flow.

circumscribing america—
right down the middle like
the amazon & the congo rivers.
_______________________

going down on moses—
nobody owns the mississippi
it’s the dick of the dinge delta.

it just keeps coming—
and coming like a naked convict
in chains getting sucked off.

its deep rich black soul—
woods & streams for sighing,
for fish, game and big oil.

the kid crawled & lurked—
he felt up his big one and
could smell it now…