Waking Past Midnight collects elements of the rough South and life as a teenager on the Delta, tinged with threat and violence.
In my late teens a pewter flask
Rode my hip and I tucked in my right boot
An eight-inch blade crafted in dimpled bone.
I didn’t court trouble, but knew cemeteries
Were full of coffins, their rubber gaskets
Rotting in the August humidity.

In Greenwood, Mississippi, my maternal
Grandfather primed his rage with bonded
Whiskey. He loved to roll the bones, to shoot
The jive with dock-hands behind the Quinn
Drug Co. A blue .38 riding his hip, he passed
The collection plate odd Sundays, blackjack
Tucked in his breast pocket. Some devout
Church-goer whispered how a white hood
And sheet haunted his bedroom closet.