Sweet Panhandle Pie

Sweet Panhandle Pie - by J. R. Salling

This poem is a fine example of Southern Gothic poetry. The sub-genre of Southern Gothic is more easily defined for fiction than it is for poetry. Poems don't always have a setting or characters, and it is setting and character that makes Southern Gothic what it is. So it's no surprise that many of the poems accepted at Southern Gothic Online are narrative in style, to some extent.

When I was a kid, we spent two consecutive summer vacations in Biloxi, MS. So this poem speaks to me at a primal level. I suffered the humidity of the "rented sweat box" and smelled the stink of a "simmering bucket of sea shells." These aren't experiences you're likely to remember of your visit to Nantucket. This is the Gulf Coast, the Redneck Riviera. These things make the poem Southern.

But it is the last stanza that makes the poem Gothic - the childish act of violence and the narrators surprising reaction - not of horror at the "youngest," but of the territorial defiance toward the "Yankee." And in the end, Granny makes it all better.

As I said to the author, this poem kicks ass.