Forgotten Southerners
Lu Donoso 2019
Just as we carefully pick
pecans and peaches under the tapestry of a Carolina sky
Customs agents strategically pick us off
one by one, under the same sun
like how we butcher the hogs
for some good ol' BBQ for some good ol' families
ours are butchered in a legal fog
Our families are not good enough
Our ancestors built the fields
the houses, the roads, cities
We clean and fix and maintain them
We’re still not good enough
The instruments we carried on our back
help build the sound of our home
But, God forbid we’re allowed on a Country chart
No matter what we do, we are
to be erased
We’re Trayvon and Blake
We’re Alice and Kate
We’re just as much Selena as Dixie Chicks
We’re gunned down then celebrated
We’re put in camps
We’re the underbelly of the New South
that thrives in the shade
We flop in your consciousness
As it drops to fake self-righteousness
Yet we survive
We’re riots and marches
Celebrations and cookouts
We’re the first Pride
the town of Hendersonville has ever seen
in the form of home-made pecan pie
We’re J of the Lumbee
We’re Mary Anne of the Roanoke and Croatan
Some of us are cosmopolitan scum
Some of us are rural hicks
History is written by the winners
and those that write forget us
but they didn’t realize
how stubborn we are
Because first and foremost
We’re Southerners after all