Includes bibliographical references.

Sam Cooke sings to me when I am afraid -- (I'm blue) the Gong Gong Song, or, America the beautiful -- Eating red dirt in Greensboro, Alabama -- nem -- Addie, Carole, cynthia, Denise -- Teaching J to read -- Sammy Davis Jr. sings to Mike Brown Jr. -- Rammer jammer -- Sonnet for sopping -- Mock election -- Prayer -- In the beginning, there was a sound -- The men came for Emmett and Tami and Michael and Eric and John and Trayvon and... -- De Soto, discoverer -- De Soto leaves a negro -- God speaks to Alabama -- Salat behind Al's Mediterranean and American Food -- Birmingham Fire and Rescue -- Robert Chambliss lays the bombs -- The first time I heard about slavery -- Viewing a KKK uniform at the Civil Rights Institute -- What the glass eye saw -- slaves for sale -- Elegy -- How to make your daughters culturally aware and racially content during Chrismastime -- Poem for revolution -- What it means to say Sally Hemings -- spin.ster -- Alabama recipe box: cornbread, 1862 -- Ingredient list: black girl -- The ballad of Pearl Bailey -- Corn silk Barbie -- Gregory Hines comes in a vision -- Birmingham Fire and Rescue haiku, 1963 -- Symphony of God -- A hymn to our Jesus -- The history books have forgotten Horace King -- On Martin Luther King Day, a noose is hung on a tree -- In Blount County -- Virgin Mary, re-imagined -- Happiness -- Gospel of the grits -- Coming of age -- Sojourner Truth speaks to her daughter, 1843 -- Riddled in the heart of Dixie.