In Praise of Palmettos and Other Invasive Roots/Love Letter with False Start
by CONSTANCE COLLIER-MERCADO
in Spring 2024
Julia Mallory, INDIGO (“One length of cloth in exchange for one human body”), 2022, Watercolor collage on paper, 24 in. x 18 in.
In Praise of Palmettos and Other Invasive Roots
I know I'm home by the stunted palm trees.
Squat pineapples litter the landscape of every cramped
backyard, office park, four-lane freeway median.
More exotic fare sabus palmetto decorate the posh
frontage of other countries and lawns, but
my favorite are the strip mall dwarves that plant
themselves in the soil of a humbler terrain:
Vacant parking lots fertilized by styrofoam cups,
cellphone towers, and a moat of metal (zinc, chrome, nickel-
plated-aluminum) give way to lush fronds plumed
from the scarcities of this day and past. Marshland
foliage of my southern motherline, to you I return. Cross
Savannah River at Lincolnton and try not to fall
off the road as your water swells my soul.
Welcome to South Carolina.
78-East to heaven. 378 to spirit. Santee.
Holly Hill. Mt Pleasant. Sound like: Georgiana.
Bernice. Sarah. One dead at 16 from fever. But not really.
Another taken by cancer for the second time
at 81. She still here though. With us in the water.
In the palm trees. In my mouth.
Dead ain't really a thing when the world can't compute
how our seed, stem, root remains. I am reminded
of other oversights: The usda classifies broomsedge
as a noxious invasive weed grown from decay and lacking
fertility. I spot them in open fields on the road all vibrant
life, redbone burnt, singed and jumping toward the sun.
Glance up to see clouds so ripe with the sweet
funk of swamp my eyes spill pluff tears.
You have arrived.
To this place that is another country from the one
I pretend to remember. Lowcountry. While I am distinctly
upcountry. Born of 1710 Croes Avenue and North Wimbee
Road. Yemassee, Beaufort County and White Plains Road,
Soundview. My whole body a migration. Highways home pool
my blood in every direction. Me, an open border between
memory and the decay of a Mason-Dixon line. I know
I’ve reached Black Charleston, or what remains, when
prayers begin to echo down King Street.
Central Mosque of Charleston next door to Fresh Cutz
Barber #2. Highway 26 like a z-cut through the fade and
Ms. Vivian's playground underfoot. A kinky tendril on the floor,
all but forgotten. Someone's grandpa stands watch though,
in faded blue jeans, cane in hand, cloth mask down around
his chin. He, a broom to catch what falls by the wayside.
I pass him by on my way out of town, perched like some stretch-
necked pheasant or silver-haired snakebird ready to dart
across my two-lane road and back into the safety of South Carolina
red top grass. Not a map but becoming. Not mine but I know him.
Love Letter With False Start
Sweet sound, bright shining as sun, no less amazing
than me who once was found but now am lost.
Sing praise that we’ve been there.
Dearest,
Before I shape this song of you inside
my mouth, some thought occurs to strike it down,
since each before brings shame renewed. I hide
my heart from thoughts of us adored, unbound
from time's dull march. Where lives that bright before?
I once was five but now am sick. Regrets
become impatient drumbeat, bitter choir.
And I, lame bird, feet face away - the wretch.
But it is not wrong to go back for that
which we've forgot. Small beak held tight to egg,
mouth full, soft yolk shone bright beneath each crack.
The wounds of childish play and giggly legs,
of budding selves in search a place to roam.
This trying body sounding its way home.
That once returned, might yet remember how
to look upon itself with something like
the grace of youth, or birth, or death. Allow,
dear heart, this heart to know the stretched taut strike
and burn of time - ten thousand times - but still
each time a tender wonder something like
Nyame, whose name means: god's divine will,
or fertile bird, or perfect sight to shade
the past mere ripple, not to last or fill
the vacuum of our love, instead to fade
but cast some residue of beauty that
I might revel in you, you, you, and braid
such eager bond into the open wide
before I shape this song of you inside.
Constance Collier-Mercado (e/she/her) is an experimental writer, artist, and womanist culture worker committed to Black language and collective memory. Born in Chicago and raised in the Bronx, her creative home resides in the space between family connections tied to Atlanta, GA; Bolivar County, MS; and Beaufort County/Gastonia, AfroCarolina[1].
Consumed by ideas of global Blackness as polyamorous Church, she weaves this aesthetic into her practice via an irreverent blk gender-infinite. Constance has received Fellowships from Baldwin for the Arts, MacDowell, The Stay at Nearview, The Periplus Collective, The Watering Hole, Kimbilio, The Hambidge Center, and Jack Jones Literary Arts. Her writing has been published in the African Diaspora Art Museum of Atlanta (ADAMA) blog, Obsidian, Hennepin Review, Root Work Journal, The Believer, Kweli Journal, FIYAH Magazine, and elsewhere.
[1] Michelle Lanier.