Life in the Mississippi Delta

Jianqing Zheng

It’s a crossroads with stops and turns,
a highway through cotton fields,
fishponds, or sleepy small towns,

or a bumpy backroad which leads
to a blues marker that tells
about B.B. King’s birthplace,

or to a barn where Emmett Till
was beaten to death. Most often
it’s like throwing a tiny rock

into a stagnant bayou covered
with green scum or gazing
at the star-studded sky.

It’s the flatland showing life as is,
slow with no sharp brakes.

Jianqing Zheng is the author of The Dog Years of Reeducation (Madville Publishing, 2023), A Way of Looking (Silverfish Review Press, 2021), Enforced Rustication in the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Texas Review Press, 2019), and The Landscape of Mind (Slapering Hol Press, 2002). His edited books include Conversations with Dana Gioia, African American Haiku, The Other World of Richard Wright, and Sonia Sanchez’s Poetic Spirit through Haiku. He is a professor of English at Mississippi Valley State University where he edits Valley Voices: A Literary Review. Zheng’s newest chapbook Just Looking: Haiku Sequences about the Mississippi Delta is available for download via Open: Journal of Arts and Literature.