From "Poetry in Place" an OA Symposium

"Luck" by Nadezda Nikolova, courtesy of the artist

My father was the son of sharecroppers. He grew up behind a mule’s ass, plowing fields and picking cotton. Redneck was a word of pride in his family. Dirt poor, they worked all day beneath a fierce sun; their burnt necks a sign of their struggle to survive.

In self-portraits, my father painted his skin the same color as the red clay roads of his childhood. 

“That red clay is indelible in your soul,” my mother said. It stained everything: our clothes, our skin, the taste of iron in our drinking water. It stained me.

Outside the Winn Parish Courthouse on Main Street stands a bronze statue of Winnfield’s most famous son. He’s nattily dressed in a three-piece suit and appears taller and thinner than in pictures. A plaque nearby describes him matter-of-factly as a lawyer, administrator, statesman; in the “Home of Three Governors,” the legendary exploits of Huey Pierce Long, Jr. need not be oversold.

1989, when Son Thomas made a ladyhead:

Photograph by Rex Miller/Rexpix

Photograph by Thomas Prior

Issue 85: Consider the Squirrel by Jamie Allen

One winter morning a couple of years ago, biking the usual route through my neighborhood east of downtown Atlanta to my preferred coffee shop in Inman Park, I happened upon a small tragedy. There in the road, beneath the gloomy Victorian façades, bare oaks, and sagging telephone lines, two squirrels lay dead, side by side—an apparent hit and run. Double sciuricide.

Like most witnesses, you probably would have kept right on going. But I am a member of the Inman Park Squirrel Census. There are seven of us on the team. We count squirrels, make infographics, throw parties. And among our many self-imposed responsibilities: to document squirrel roadkill in the neighborhood. So, you see, the double squirrel death was a pair of dark aces. I quickly established a crime scene, positioning my bike in the road to block oncoming traffic, took out my phone, and started snapping photos. Read more...

Jamie Allen, squirrel enthusiast/activist/defender, sheds a little light on these omnipresent yet perhaps undervalued American arboreal critters in his essay from our Summer Issue (which you can still order for poolside savoring!)

"In the beginning, the Weeki Wachee mermaids were local teenagers, paid in hot dogs and hamburgers and bathing suits. There were so few cars on Route 19 that every time they heard one coming, the mermaids scampered to the side of the road to lure drivers in for a show." - Lauren Groff on the mermaids of Florida's Weeki Wachee in OA85