by Jo Angela Edwins

July 4, 2024

I just sliced a deep red tomato
grown in a kind man’s garden,
a gift he gave me today
out of his kindness, and I stacked
each slice on top of a piece
of white bread slathered
in Duke’s mayonnaise,
and I salted and I peppered,
and I topped it all with another
piece of white bread slathered
in Duke’s mayonnaise,
and I lifted the sandwich
and took a giant bite,
and the juices ran pink
and creamy down my chin,
and, yes, I am Southern-born
and raised by two Southerners
who were nowhere near perfect
but were decent at heart,
and they did not shove bitter vegetables
or hatred down my throat,
and I have no patience
for anyone I know
who would wish to make harder
the life of the kind man
who grew that tomato,
a man with brown skin
and another kind man
for a husband, and they
are Southern too, and if
the sharp knife of your vote
cast in pride or selfishness
cuts them or really anyone
until blood runs in the streets,
know that the knives of cruelty
cut both ways, and everyone’s blood
is the same deep shade of red,
and one day all of it may run
down the chins of the monsters
to whom you gave the tower keys,
and maybe then you’ll wonder
(or maybe not) in your own hurt
why the God you say you pray to
didn’t save you from yourself.

Jo Angela Edwins has published poems in over 100 journals and anthologies. She is author of the collection A Dangerous Heaven (2023) and the chapbooks Play (2016), and Bitten (2025). She has received awards from Winning Writers, Poetry Super Highway, the Jasper Project, and the SC Academy of Authors. She teaches at Francis Marion University in Florence, SC, and is the poet laureate of the Pee Dee region of South Carolina.