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new poem – Buckling the Bible Belt

Belinda Subraman

Buckling the Bible Belt

by Belinda Subraman

 

I pledge allegiance to my hillbilly past
cheap fan motor buzz
black dirt harshness
inbred bullies and bigotry.
Winter baseboard rumbles heat
in thin walls of fear
walls that work as refuge
enshrine weakness with
corporal punishment in tombs of shame.
Echoes down a backwards hall
require humility and magic prayer
as earth boils and fumes in science.
Reason is a devil’s turd
as we eat the flesh of white Jesus
and drink his blood.
Crackers and grape juice with guilt
and submissive independence
whirlpool around inherited drains
one slang language misunderstood
bucked up with guns
and ambivalent Bibles for all.
Amen.


 

Contrails and Entrails

 

I’m flying over a popcorn sea
finally out of turbulence…
Southern sanctioned abuse.
I’m flying, released
over the veins of earth.

My roots have claws
anger and fear
language of permafrost
tests curved to the negative
surprise pits of darkness
in a house of correction
where nothing is right
nothing is realized
but the changing rules of God
from Bibles living
in tombs of protection.


 

Lunch With Jesus

 

We held hands around the table
at Applebee’s and prayed before eating.
Fox Network was there and low self-esteem.
“The white cops were right, “one said.
“More people need beating.
We need more guns.
Too many getting rich off welfare
too lazy to work.”
“Christians have no rights,” another claimed.
“What about the Christians?”
I kept quiet. Dogs were howling for meat.
Jesus turned his head away.
Bibles slept in their cars.

 

 

BIO

Belinda SubramanBelinda Subraman has been writing poetry since the 6th grade and publishing since college. She had a ten year run editing and publishing Gypsy Literary Magazine. Six of those ten years were from Germany where she was a Bohemian outcast among officer wives. She edited books by Vergin’ Press, among them: Henry Miller and My Big Sur Days by Judson Crews. While in Germany she also published the Sanctuary Tape Series which was a mastered compilation of audio poetry and original music from around the world. If you interview her about her publishing days you will discover that she threw out a whole Charles Bukowski manuscript because he told her to just trash what she didn’t like. THEN she found out he was Famous. She might have kept the manuscript but still would not have published it. (It wasn’t his best work). Bukowski, Burroughs and a few other literary figures did make it into some of the first Gypsy issues, however.

Over the years Ms. Subraman’s work has appeared in print journals, anthologies and online journals including: Best Texas Writing, The Louisiana Review, The Arkansas Review, A New Geography of Poets, Puerto del Sol, Borderlands, Rio Grande Review, Social Justice, Gargoyle, Between the Cracks, Out of Line, Mondo Barbie, Big Bridge, and Lips Unsealed. In the past year her work has appeared in: Poets and Artists, Red Fez, Unlikely Stories, Tribe Magazine, Yellow Chair Review, and Chiron Review.

 

 

 

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