Blog Post 2

Memphis Resurrection
BY HONORÉE FANONNE JEFFERS

Who died and made you Elvis?
      —Bumper sticker

The big rock by my door

is a plaster prop, after

all. I’m back to hear

screams for what I can’t

do, couldn’t do forty

years ago. Awkward

pelvic thrusts fooled

the camera and virgins,

but I have no more fish-

fry tunes left to dress

up on brand new plates.

This time around,

I spend all day singing

cracked Mississippi

homilies. Why

did I want to live

forever in the first place?

Salvation felt better dead,

floating home free

while my bones, secret

and brown, mingle

with old dirt.

The speaker of the poem is Elvis. The title of the poem was my first hint of Elvis being the speaker since I knew he had a home and died in memphis. To me it seems like the writer of the poem was not a big Elvis fan. She personifies him to be sort of arrogant and overrated. He was famous for his pelvic thrust being seductive and compelling, but in the poem they are refereed to as awkward. You even get the idea that he sees himself as a fake and undeserving as he "fooled" the camera. He is such an iconic figure in the music industry, the negative feelings toward him kind of surprised me. I think that this poem would be considered a narrative because it tells the story of Elvis looking back at his life. I liked the playful tone that the author sets you up for by quoting a bumper sticker before starting. It is also normally thought that we should not speak badly of the dead, so it is kind of ironic that the poem is actually the dead speaking illy of themselves.