Come to Light: Contemporary Southern Poetry

By Morgan Gray

MORGAN GRAY grew up in a small rivertown where gossip on a circular-dial party-line telephone and which allowed neighbors to eavesdrop on each others conversations and forward the "news" to Sunday prayer meetings composed of blue-haired widows reeking of Channel #5 family reunions, so-called worthy matrons, and just plain ole exaggerated, gossip by high-horse ladies full of prejudice, judgment, and better-than-thou tones. Absorbing all this folklore, Morgan felt compelled to evaluate and question morals that did not seem to define a sense of right or wrong, and good or evil.

As you read through Come to Light, you will feel poignant emotions, visualize stark, if not startling imagery, meet a variety of unique characters (some very good and some very evil), and be enlightened by timeless themes that will touch your lives, and perhaps even haunt your own identity.

Morgan Gray was delivered at birth in a two-story 1960's home by a self-trained, midwife grandmother, while a one-year older brother lay alongside the same bed where Morgan still sleeps in today. Living there till married at age nineteen in the living room witnessed by a large portrait of a sad-faced Jesus—no water turned to wine, there in the same house, Morgan's dad died in the same birth bed and several years later, Morgan's mom breathed her last breath in her favorite green-velvet rocking chair.

Morgan raised two girls in the same small town just a few blocks away from the homestead and still lives there today. Now a retired veteran English teacher of thirty years, Morgan has reached out to over 3,000 young high school adult-about-to-be's while, instilling in them a love for literature, and a freedom of expression as they too Come to Light.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 1, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796018684

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Morgan Gray.

ISBN:       Softcover       978-1-7960-1869-1

                 eBook            978-1-7960-1868-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 02/28/2019

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Preface

"To all my children

who genuinely love me:

you give me great Joy and Reason for Living."

–Morgan Gray

2017

Words are flowing out like endless raindrops in a paper cup…

–Lennon & McCartney, Across the Universe

1969

"Paranoia strikes deep.

Into your life it will creep.

It starts when you’re always afraid.

You step out of line. The men come and take you away."

–Stephen Stills. Performed by Buffalo Springfield

For What it’s Worth

1966

"We are the nobodies.

Wanna be somebodies.

We’re dead,

but we know who we are."

–Marilyn Manson, The Nobodies

2001

I can’t believe you sit around and think about all this shit.

–Wright Gray

2017

Contents

Preface

Come to Light

Where I Am From

The Rape of the Forsythia

Dear Sister

Rivertown, USA

M

Falling for Fall

A Ray of Hope

Little Mouse

Naked Trees

To My Mother

Suddenlike

No One Noticed the Fish Died

Over the Rainbow

A girl exiting a school bus

Welcome to My Nightmare*

Dear Crocus

Embellishment

Frustration

Scabs

An Easy Prey

Conjugating FUCK

Good and Evil Breeds Outside My Windows

Hide & Seek

On Base a companion piece to Hide & Seek

Without

Missing You All

One More Beer

Emily & Me*

I Swear to God the Girls’ Bathroom Smells Like a Smokin’ Turd

Dark, but well attached

I Love My Marlboro Man

Merry Christmas

Things to do

Beyond Never

Mortality

Afterlight

Home in Rivertown, USA

Weeds and Wildflowers

A greazy, little man

Father Joseph and Virginia Mary

Pointy Bra’zarre

Sammy Horse

Nigger Dave

Ronnie Lee

Ole Man Buster Lee

The Black Widow

Harvey Johnson

Herman Gilbert

Raymond Bra’zarre

Ronald Bra’zarre, the Ferryman

Susy Jefferson

Becca Bishop

Melinda Bishop

The Three Little Old Zelte Ladies

Bobbie Johnson

Just a black man

Graydie: the ole soft shoe

Shirley: the Spider Lady

Dr. Friendly

Miss Klown

My Sweet Baby Jade

Poor Lisa

Mousie

Some One is Missing

the end

Come to Light

In the cool of any certain Summer evening,

just as the blue of Twilight darkens

the trees

into tuxedoed gentlemen,

the Landscape’s face shadows

the lingering, pallid Night sky while

Fairies Come to Light.

They rise from beneath the still-warm Earth,

spread their fragile wings,

and Smile—

for now is their time to fly.

Softly. Slowly. They peep their faces

and light their spirits on and off, on and off

as they laugh and hide their spriteful nature

from the peopled world.

Few notice their arrival; few notice their playful glee

as they glide through the Night sky

speckling the sweet-scented honeysuckle breeze