Vox Populi
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Barbara Hamby: Ode to Skimpy Clothes and August in the Deep South
A young woman is walking with her boyfriend, and it’s deep
summer in the South, like being in a sauna
but hotter and stickier, and she’s wearing a tank top
and a cotton skirt so thin I can see her black
underpants, and this is the way I dressed in my early twenties,
partly from poverty and partly because my body
was so fresh that I couldn’t imagine not showing it off–
marzipan arms, breasts like pink cones of vanilla
soft-serve ice cream, hips more like brioche than flesh,
and the sound track to those times I can conjure
on my inner radio on a day in August–“Wild Horses,”
and “All I Want,” Joni Mitchell and Mick Jagger
singing a duet for me, but I was in love with Bartok, too,
and Beethoven’s trios, moving through those sultry days
to that celestial music, going to the campus cinema for the air
conditioning and Wild Strawberries and La Dolce Vita,
skin brown from taking the Chevy pick-up to the coast,
at night putting the fan in the window and reading
thick novels until three or four, and one morning waking at noon
to a cardinal screaming, the red male hovering,
flying above, my cat with the brown female in her mouth,
and when I release the bird she falls on the grass as if dead,
but she’s in shock, and I hold the cat, who wants her again,
but then the bird comes to, hops across the grass
and flies off with her mate, and seeing that girl’s black panties
under her skirt brings back those days with such a fierce ache
that I might as well be lost in the outskirts of Rome, a little girl
making up a story of seeing the Virgin and everyone
wanting to believe that God has appeared in the parking lot
of an abandoned store, the graffiti a message, something
divine in the plastic bags and fast-food boxes rolling in the wind.
From On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (Pitt, 2014). Included in Vox Populi by permission of the author and the University of Pittsburgh Press
Barbara Hamby is the author of many collections of poetry. She and her husband David Kirby edited the poetry anthology Seriously Funny. She teaches at Florida State University where she is distinguished university scholar.
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Such a delicious po
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Great stuff, well said. Strangely, it evoked memories of my high school in suburban Houston, where in the mid sixties, the Beach Boys were the music of choice, guys did not wear black underwear, but some streaked their black hair blonde to look like California surfers. A few even had surfboards strapped to the roofs of their jalopies, though they never went near the surf. Different time, but the heat was just the same. The Beatles and Stones pushed the surfboards off the gnarly dudes’ cars.
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Jim, you grew up in suburban Houston in the sixties? Me too. Which suburb?
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I went to Spring Branch Senior High in…Spring Branch neighborhood, Between the Katy Freeway and Hempstead HIghway. Moved to Memphis after my Junior year in 1966. Then on to St. Olaf in Northfield, MN. How about you?
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I went to Memorial jr and sr high schools in the Spring Branch school district, your neighbors. Graduated high school in 1972, went to SMU (Southern Methodist U. in Dallas) then to U. of Iowa for grad school. Most of my education occurred outside academia in libraries as well as bars listening to old jazz players.
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My 52 Chevy was loaded with surfing decals and usually had a huge load of surfboards on top. Not sure how I even drove!
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I went to 4 high schools, Wakefield in Arlington , Va, South Pasadena ( the kid from the low income neighborhood), Muir in Pasadena, Crescenta Valley near Glendale, California. Got my Social Studies teacher in trouble when I asked him to sponsor our Civil Rights club. Good trouble ( and maybe not so good)
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Us young geezers did get around, huh Barbara?
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When I read “seeing that girl’s black panties
under her skirt brings back those days with such a fierce ache” in the dentist’s waiting room, I whispered “Yesss” but a bit too loud, I presume, as the receptionist popped her head above her computer and said –“It’ll just be a few more minutes”!!
Again Barbara, what a fiercely good poem!
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Hahahaha. Sounds like something I’d do. People are always worried about that odd old man muttering to himself in the corner.
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I’m always surprised by images that take off. I’m glad I’m a woman. I don’t think a man could get away with that image or it would be a lot more difficult.
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Remembering those moments of early statements of self that, blessedly, are allowed with such subtle prompts captured with Barbara’s reminiscences. Ah, the 60’s freedoms flitted by upon reading this.
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Yes, I acted in a theatre in my teen years. I miss that life.
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Oh, how I want to go back to black underpants and happy endings for near-dead birds! I can’t, because I never lived there to begin with. But, dear Barbara, I can keep reading your poems and be transported. Thank you!
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Barbara, you got me to a time and place I never experienced, epsecially because I am not American. But I can relate, because some things are universal. And I rescued that bird. Another wonderful Barbara Hamby poem.
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Excellent, Barbara. Thanks x
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I remember as if I were someone else and I guess I was. But oh I love Barbara Hamby’s poetry.
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As do I, Barbara. As do I.
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a gem, as ever! so you were the one with the black underpants and I the witless, hormone/crazed male adolescent on my neighbor William’s porch, filled not merely with lust but also hatred for that undeserving boyfriend of yours!
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As was I, Syd. As was I.
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not the male part, I assume. Anyway, your poems are always terrific. Keep ‘em coming!
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That was me!
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Oh that girl, that sultry air that holds us in full embrace. I sit in that morning and read no other place to be, the perfect August poem upon the screen.
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I agree, Sean. Barbara’s poems are perfect.
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