8. ""Brown Country" - Nikky Finney" In response to In response to 0
Nikky Finney is one of the only women in the Kentucky-based writing collective 'the affrilacian poets.' her work is absolutely astounding and u've never truly heard her words til u've heard her read them.. but still, here's a piece by her. not my #1 favorite but the only one ive found on the net.
its long but its really good.
Brown Country
Why certainly I loves country am partial to a sad sappy love song and head back howling for a lost love I live to the tune of hoping hopelessly I am country and drawn to the music of the land not the red on the white in the blue but the green and the amber and the ochre-orange country Natively black foot with land earth ocean where fathers and their mothers smoldered in the name of the Union how come ain't no sad country songs about Indians being holocausted or Africans jumping the broom on Sundays for to never see their Sweety again When it's only me I turn the car radio to it the spot where God-Family-Country live polygamously through the silence a voice laughs asking "You ain't really gonna listen to that are you?" Yeah Good Buddy I'm listening so let the chips fall where they may Because I do do so love the brown and the black of the red on the white in the blue
Does loving country and craving a song that brings my own black-balled eyes up to the depth of my haunted-hunted heart does that make me a country music fan a natural for sorrow a Charlene Pride of poetry a black country singer with acoustic and eraser plucking a nappy live wire
I who sing along with the twanging of the car radio with country songs when nobody is listening how do you explain being African and loving country not the red or the white in the blue but the green and the amber and the ochre-orange You never explain just let the good times roll
Carolina born so I seen it all from sea to shining sea island I play it back to you with a pencil sharp guitar and hambone hard with the other I come backed by fiddle and calypso And on certain notes my gullah starts to drawl
Mercy Me I’ll throw my head back in a minute even close my eyes tight when I sing it’s always something about losing my head or making up with Or just plain wallowing in the pain of love Awww come on now You know how it goes
I’m no Dolly or Billy Ray But I sho am country
And when I’m gone Please somebody feed my cat and in return I’ll make my voice low country quiver real good then roll for you you laughing but this really ain’t nothing "shakey bakey" cause I know folks born in a Holler who scream all their life and nobody ever writes a song about them shouldn’t that be a country’s song too or is that only poverty and the private property of Bluesmen and Plumbleached women another jurisdiction another country
At the end of my singing it’s always so Grand Old Oprey hot that my mascara’s usually running and by then the Breck hairspray has wilted my locks back to lion size normal and I’m ready to unhitch my silver buckle drop my jean skirt to the floor and find me some indigo to wrap back around my waist
WellShootGoodBuddy what more do I have to do to prove it I tell you it’s true I am a black country singer Cause what there is for me to sing about Should make you push your beer to the side and take a walk through some Black family farm land some Black burial grounds now sold and desecrated by golf ball signs that say ‘Private Drive’ should make you want to know this singing southerner’s truth it’s my job living in this brown country to take you inside of real live heartache and make you tap your foot long enough and make you smile at yourself until you recognize your Daddy’s face floating in what I’m saying
Until you ask yourself as you walk away does she really listen to Country music or was that just a poem
Oh why am I fooling myself They won’t never say I ever sang a good country song I’m the wrong shade of country They’ll just be mad that I never let you forget for one minute that country, the land, is color coded and that country, the music, is pretty shady too
Country the twanging one you always hear is sometimes sad but always sweet steeped in honor and family and cheating checkered skirts and the backside of some poor slithering creature pummeled and stretched into a pair of roach killing boots they dance to the sizzling notes that I just lean and listen to the long and lazy stretched out lines about life but whose life and whose country
This is not about happy endings this music ain’t concerning Cinderellas but stepsisters and sons and pumpkins and shoes that never fit some feet and the lonely of life and how dance it back away so why does this Black girl’s iambic feet always have to doe-see-doe in your face about it why does she have to sing country music to herself along in her car to not be afraid why can’t she buy a front row seat and wave to Naomi Judd singing those too close to Aretha like lines "I love you so stinking much that if you ever try and leave me I’m with you"
I love country for the tender story for the blazing heart for the ache and sorrow sweetness that is always there for the green in the amber of the ochre-orange in the red on the white of the blue that I always feel
Oh what the hell I am country I like listening to its sweet tang linger like a sour apple baked to the pipes of my roasted mouth
As I drive this back road I take taste of it as I pull into this honkey tonk gas station and pump 5 dollars premium I sing along until I hear my radio’s same song even louder now and look around for the twin source rolling out a hiked up summertime window there in the diner next to the station I know the words but my daddy’s lips freeze I end my harmless sing-a-long and look up
I fall into dozens of crawling all over me eyes that accompany the Kentucky Headhunter tune they are full of catfish and budweiser and quickly turn into razors swinging in the August air
I feel the blood gushing cutting the music into the red then the white the blue of my brown
This place where the cowboy under the hat spits the color of my mother’s skin out his window I was taught never to step inside he knows all this an follows my every move guzzling down his yahoo drink he brings his buddies to the looking glass they zip their pants up and down like a fiddle as one of them begins to step away from the rest I need to pay for my gas and go but my swinging feet are stitched frozen to my lips I look away to the woods all around My grandfather is untying himself from all the trees He pops and stretches his many necks back into place He steps toward me He says I should consider history the payment in full
Country music is historical This is the music we were lynched by These are the hangman’s songs
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