Kelly Morgan
From Kudzu, On Eating the South
You know,
I didn’t start
in these parts.
No,
first I started
slow and easy
on a continent
across the sea.
Arrowroot,
they’d call me.
But I was happy
to settle here—
I like a new place to root, grow;
to stretch my legs a while,
walk round the fields,
survey the land.
So I came to these fertile
southern states,
and set up shop— a new plant nation
to try my hand at conquerin’, if you will.
People dug the ground,
they turned and tilled,
and I reached into this brown earth.
I set myself in vibrant soil and began to coil, broil, boil.
Long story short, I’m talkin’ to you now.
People called me erosion control long time ago, but you know
and I know, and they know that we can remove erosion
from that title they gave me— I’m just control.
I hold the toiling ground as property I crawl across the farmland,
stifle corns and beans. I grab at every chance there is
for leaves to start. I propagate. I lead.
Anyway, I’m ramblin’. I like to take my time when I tell a story,
you know. I think this world moves too fast, too ready
to renounce the past. You want to know what I’m most proud of?
My roots, my heritage: the tuberous tumors that extend for miles, for centuries.
You can’t see unless you start diggin’, but underground, I’m everywhere.
That’s right: nothin’ makes me as happy as knowin’ that I have grown
and fed my hunger, that I am inheriting the earth,
my birthright. I send out seeds, sometimes.
They do alright— some bust, but mostly they survive, and strive.
I shoot out runners that split at the nodes to form new plants,
and those do good. It’s hard work, but honest, takin’ claim
to more land each sunny southern day. Someone’s gotta do it,
got to climb the locust fence and hickory tree— gotta climb that monument,
creep across the bronze, suffocate that sentinel ‘til he is only me.
People’ve recoiled, said I’m a disease, but I know better.
Trees were made to be climbed. I gotta protect myself, my kind.
I provide— my family, my progeny:
that future is everything.
And, you know, back
on those seeds again:
they’re hard-coated. They’re sturdy, those things.
Sometimes I plant one and people
think it’s spoiled, that
it’s dead, but I know
better. That seed
stays
dormant
for years
and
years,
and then
when you
think
you’ve rooted
out
the last
of
me,
I’m right there--
I’m blossoming green in your backyard; sulfurous, citrine.
You know,
I didn’t start
in these parts.
No,
first I started
slow and easy
on a continent
across the sea.
Arrowroot,
they’d call me.
But I was happy
to settle here—
I like a new place to root, grow;
to stretch my legs a while,
walk round the fields,
survey the land.
So I came to these fertile
southern states,
and set up shop— a new plant nation
to try my hand at conquerin’, if you will.
People dug the ground,
they turned and tilled,
and I reached into this brown earth.
I set myself in vibrant soil and began to coil, broil, boil.
Long story short, I’m talkin’ to you now.
People called me erosion control long time ago, but you know
and I know, and they know that we can remove erosion
from that title they gave me— I’m just control.
I hold the toiling ground as property I crawl across the farmland,
stifle corns and beans. I grab at every chance there is
for leaves to start. I propagate. I lead.
Anyway, I’m ramblin’. I like to take my time when I tell a story,
you know. I think this world moves too fast, too ready
to renounce the past. You want to know what I’m most proud of?
My roots, my heritage: the tuberous tumors that extend for miles, for centuries.
You can’t see unless you start diggin’, but underground, I’m everywhere.
That’s right: nothin’ makes me as happy as knowin’ that I have grown
and fed my hunger, that I am inheriting the earth,
my birthright. I send out seeds, sometimes.
They do alright— some bust, but mostly they survive, and strive.
I shoot out runners that split at the nodes to form new plants,
and those do good. It’s hard work, but honest, takin’ claim
to more land each sunny southern day. Someone’s gotta do it,
got to climb the locust fence and hickory tree— gotta climb that monument,
creep across the bronze, suffocate that sentinel ‘til he is only me.
People’ve recoiled, said I’m a disease, but I know better.
Trees were made to be climbed. I gotta protect myself, my kind.
I provide— my family, my progeny:
that future is everything.
And, you know, back
on those seeds again:
they’re hard-coated. They’re sturdy, those things.
Sometimes I plant one and people
think it’s spoiled, that
it’s dead, but I know
better. That seed
stays
dormant
for years
and
years,
and then
when you
think
you’ve rooted
out
the last
of
me,
I’m right there--
I’m blossoming green in your backyard; sulfurous, citrine.
Prayer of Saint Frances Come to the laurel and the sourwood cabin. Thread life through the needles of circling white pines. Strum the dulcimer; weave smooth the bracken. Before you enter, see the breast of the robin lift the morning off the edge of the skyline. Come to the laurel and the sourwood cabin. Take up the shuttle to blossom a pattern that creeps into being like crackling grapevine. Strum the dulcimer; weave smooth the bracken. The fabric is coarse, like the hemlock battens. Blackberries ferment into slow summer wine. Come to the laurel and the sourwood cabin. Now pause on the loom; let the warp and weft slacken. Music gives time enough to ease the design. Strum the dulcimer; weave smooth the bracken. Stoke the fire in winter so the locust bark blackens. Let go the roadway and the wheels that blind. Come to the laurel and the sourwood cabin. Strum the dulcimer; weave smooth the bracken. For my great aunt Frances |
Kelly Morgan is a rising senior at Vanderbilt University majoring in creative writing and minoring in mathematics. She serves as editor-in-chief of The Vanderbilt Review and poetry editor of SciLit Review. Her writing has appeared in The Blue Route, Vanderbilt Lives, The Vanderbilt Review, and Scaffold: A Showcase of Vanderbilt First-Year Writing, and is soon to be published in Mosaic Art & Literary Journal. She is the winner of the 2021 Iris N. Spencer Villanelle Prize and of a Scholastic Art and Writing Silver Medal.