{"id":124068,"date":"2025-03-10T11:48:48","date_gmt":"2025-03-10T11:48:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/anthropology\/tallahassee-ghazal\/"},"modified":"2025-03-10T11:48:48","modified_gmt":"2025-03-10T11:48:48","slug":"tallahassee-ghazal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=124068","title":{"rendered":"Tallahassee Ghazal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<p>Using an ancient Arabic poetic form, a poet-archaeologist from Florida cycles through feelings of entrapment growing up queer in the U.S. South. But in the end, they celebrate love for this place\u2014and that \u201cmost of us are breathing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text-insert\"><em>\u201cTallahassee Ghazal\u201d is part of the collection <\/em>Poets Resist, Refuse, and Find a Way Through. <em>Read the introduction to the collection <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sapiens.org\/culture\/resistance-refusal-wayfinding-anthropological-poetry\/\">here<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n<h3>Tallahassee Ghazal &#8211; Listen<\/h3>\n<p><audio src=\"https:\/\/www.sapiens.org\/app\/uploads\/2025\/01\/TallahasseeGhazal-1.mp3\" controls><\/audio><\/p>\n<p>Enter sunset. Two boys listen by the tracks to a slow train leaving town.<br \/>\nThe train breathes hard. Its thunder ends. The boys: \u201cGotta get out of this town.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"padding-left: 00px\">June, and the college kids pack their bags. They hate this South\u2014they almost wish it<\/span><br \/>\nwould burn behind them on the highway out of town.<\/p>\n<p>Look up from the swamps, the train tracks, the sunken, soggy trails: how<br \/>\n<span style=\"padding-left: 00px\">to miss the governor\u2019s tower, oblong and concrete, the tallest eyesore in town?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>June, and the only gay bar around has half-off vodka, soda drowned<br \/>\nin blackouts. Hands find warm company in thighs, in a bathroom-sized town.<\/p>\n<p>The Capitol, in dawn light, is a pillar of phosphorus. With no trees around, (Tallahassee is the state capital of Florida.)<br \/>\n<span style=\"padding-left: 00px\">the ground is hot poison, foot-frying, weaponized. <em>Just try to protest in this town.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p>June, and all the lawns are Spanish grass and crown vetch.<br \/>\nLawns announce in bold red signs: They do not want you in this town.<\/p>\n<p><em>Pit bull puppy \/ Have you seen him? \/ Call if found.<br \/>\n<\/em>Flyers and a number roast on wire poles across town.<\/p>\n<p>June, and you must not call the police. They carry dark rounds.<br \/>\n<span style=\"padding-left: 00px\">You\u2019re safe inside, reading the wiki\u2014you cannot breathe\u2014about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.blackpast.org\/african-american-history\/sundown-towns\/\">sundown towns<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Flyers and a number roast on wire poles across town.<br \/>\n<em>Pit bull puppy \/ Have you seen him? \/ Call if found. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>June, and it\u2019s margarita season, the month for lime zest, ice blocks, and loud: every way to<br \/>\nkill money, kill days, lick the salt off the months in this town.<\/p>\n<p>Lithe little clippers snip the heads off crown vetch.<br \/>\nKudzu swallows them: a green snake stomach, circling the town.<\/p>\n<p>June, and you watch the goslings by the pond, tender and brown.<br \/>\nNext month, the kudzu will bloom violet, a living skirt of the town.<\/p>\n<p>Ask for the names to burn, for the statues to be melted down; (Since 2015, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/smart-news\/least-110-confederate-monuments-and-symbols-have-been-removed-2015-180969254\/\">numerous initiatives<\/a> in the U.S. South have removed monuments or renamed landmarks that honor Confederate figures, who supported, or were themselves perpetrators of, racial segregation, human trafficking, and enslavement. One example is Francis Eppes, a plantation owner who had enslaved people. He had been honored by a statue and building in his name on the campus of Florida State University <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tallahassee.com\/story\/news\/2020\/07\/23\/florida-state-university-president-thrasher-eppes-statue-mounment-removed-campus-fsu-black\/5492886002\/\">until 2020<\/a>. )<br \/>\nthe cliches keep breathing when you\u2019re tired of trying to change your town.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"padding-left: 00px\">June, and most of us are breathing. This is enough to be proud. Historian, you are lucky<\/span><br \/>\nto survive your hometown.<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sapiens.org\/culture\/tallahassee-ghazal-poem-noland-blain\/\">Tallahassee Ghazal<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sapiens.org\">SAPIENS<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Using an ancient Arabic poetic form, a poet-archaeologist from Florida cycles through feelings of entrapment growing up queer in the U.S. South. But in the end, they celebrate love for this place\u2014and that \u201cmost of us are breathing.\u201d \u201cTallahassee Ghazal\u201d is part of the collection Poets Resist, Refuse, and Find a Way Through. Read the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":124069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11767],"tags":[54516,19128,7942,6692,7613,19117,16837],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-124068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anthropology","tag-ghazal","tag-identity","tag-place","tag-politics","tag-relationships","tag-tallahassee","tag-violence"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Tallahassee Ghazal - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=124068\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tallahassee Ghazal - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Using an ancient Arabic poetic form, a poet-archaeologist from Florida cycles through feelings of entrapment growing up queer in the U.S. South. 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