Zora and Langston Take a Road Trip Through the South by Kassy Lee

Summer 1927

On a shoulder holster, Zora has her gun
and, in me, she says, the company of good things.

It’s years in the future, how we cut each other out
of our autobiographies, cut each other’s skin

and skin each other’s pride in letters.
Neither of us knew when we drove

through the South, collecting the lore
of the country folk, how hatred

can be audible in the song of love.
But that’s years away. Today,

we teach little children how
to blow bubbles with spools.

Tonight, we hear Bessie Smith sing
at a concert in Macon, and I love

Zora’s finger-waves beneath her black-eyed veil.
That night we could hear Bessie sing

from blocks away from the theater, and I didn’t
know this then, but sometimes

bitterness, too, can be heard in a loving tune.
I will visit you with my love, says the sun.

There’s nothing more to say.

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Contributor’s Notes

Kassy Lee (she/her) is a poet, researcher, and educator. She earned a BA in Comparative Literature from Columbia and an MFA in Creative Writing from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. She lives in Ypsilanti.