Hushpuppies

by Nicole Sadek





In Charleston, seafood is our silver. We watch from Red’s Ice House

as pelicans dredge for briny scales in Shem Creek. We speak from

salted tongues and carry clouds of humidity on our shoulders, let our

sand-washed hair and Southern accents flow like Spartina grass on a

summer’s marsh. We are three-story Italianates at the harbor’s edge,

and ghost tours pulled by American standardbreds. We are a sun-

glinted “Calhoun” sign, moppy yellow hair, and cigarette butts tightly

packed between cobblestone roads. We are a medley of Daniel Island,

Mount Pleasant, West Ashley, and Isle of Palms, linked by the

Emmanuel 9 and Highway 17. We are the clogging of horse hooves.

We are the thirteen steps that lead to Drayton Hall, and we are the

superstitious. Limestone and granite are our only markers, those

chapped walls of a Georgian Meeting Street apartment; brick, one-

room quarters, dressed in moss and spider webs, bowing down to

Master’s House; suburban homes at every bend of the Holy City. We

are Rainbow Row, after a drunken sailor’s moonlit expedition,

sweetgrass baskets stacked aside Gullah gumbo, motorcycle accidents

on 526 at rush hour. We are travel magazine royalty, vice-principal

stepping off the bridge. We are slave markets and a bullet-speckled

America Street. We are hand-in-hand on Ravenel Bridge, thinking

Confederate smog, Carolina gold, Walter Scott, gunshots,

hushpuppies.





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