One, two, look, they’re everywhere.

I have to catch them.

Look at this.

Another naff actually.

Look at this.

This is not normal.

Look at this.

Welcome to Seven Days of Poetry with Dr.

Mac.

Wither solid states split on asymmetric winds, open to elements which melt in struggles of Birmingham.

Jazz greats and low rent apartments spill into Campana covered streets in a stifling heat pushing against division lines.

So in this poem, I was trying to come up with a few different options.

That first line, Wither solid states, is really a play on a book about, it was like a pro-segregation book in a sense by Charles Wallace Collins called Wither Solid State.

And then I played with that word state in terms of matter being, you know, matter being a solid state, being a liquid state.

And then there’s a little bit of a fish Easter egg in there with split open and melt because I was just talking about like what’s your favorite version of a song.

And it was a thread on just fish fans are nerds.

And so people debate like what’s the favorite version of a favorite song over four years.

And so I just thought I’d throw in a split open and melt kind of Easter egg in there.

But then I tried to draw on the elements of Birmingham, Alabama in the 1920s where there was before we had a large push for the civil rights movement.

There was a strong labor movement in the black community of Birmingham that was connected towards the CIO, which was one of the very first times the labor movement and civil rights got connected with this being communism or labeled as being un-American or it was othering.

And the labor movement in Birmingham was very centered in on the black community in the 20s.

And it was one of the first kind of mini scares around anti-communism.

And that topic’s been on my mind lately as basically everybody talks about Marxist judges or communist that.

It’s just everything in America, when you ask someone what’s it mean to be American, they almost define it by being what it’s not, like being un-something, un-communist or un-what does it mean to be something.

And so I wanted to play with that idea.

And then you also have that whole downtown vibrancy of Birmingham.

So what I did is I went and searched for pictures of Birmingham, Alabama in the 1920s and 30s and was talking about the Roosevelt, the famous, not the Roosevelt, the Jefferson Hotel in downtown Birmingham.

And so I wanted to juxtapose that image on the idea of playing with meaning.