Inspired by Amanda Gaye Smith’s “When I die”

Throw my body in one

of those Irish mummy bogs.

Fuck fire, or worms, or

being slid into a choppy sea.

I wanna lurk

around the mineral murk.

Slowly fossilizing, just vibing.

One of my more direct approaches to the southern gothic, and Derek Gladwin’s post-colonial gothic. A place of so much life and yet so much danger, the looming and choking morass of flora and fauna consumes all, pulling you into the stifling blue shadows. An oppressive weight of color, smell, teeth, and branches, the swamp threatens but also heals and protects. It seems so foreign, yet to me the landscape is as human as it is primordial. The place to hide and heal, to reclaim your humanity when others hunt you. The refugee, the slave, the persecuted: all mark the southern swamp, and the swamp marks them. Its willow wisps chase the tax man and his posse, a defiant answer to the crushing exploitative power of modern world.