Southern Accent

When she opens her mouth to speak
she goes from zero right to cornbread.
She unintentionally stresses the long "I" in words,
like "right" "night" and "Sprite".
Her southern accent sounds like
she should be barefoot and pregnant,
with a tow-head knee baby and a
dirty-faced lap baby,
living out past the suburbs in an
unincorporated part of the county,
like she lives in a beat up single-wide
house-trailer that has well water and
a screen door that never closes all the way,
and a junk car up on blocks in the front yard.
She sounds like she has a husband
who can't find a job, who sports a mullet
and lays around all day drinking cheap beer
complaining about everything.
She sounds as though she works at a
convenience store gas station
where truckers and unskilled laborers
come by to talk to her, trying to impress her,
though she is barely a notch above plain
or ordinary, yet not unattractive.
She's mostly quiet and unsure of herself.
But when she talks, she sounds southern,
like she's living a life of routine without many options,
dropping her kids off at her mother's house
every morning and picking them up again each evening.
And when she speaks,
she sounds like a very long day,
like car trouble again,
like crying in the shower.
She sounds southern like cornbread.