{"id":113,"date":"2020-01-14T20:33:02","date_gmt":"2020-01-14T20:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pluckjournal.uky.edu\/?p=113"},"modified":"2020-06-03T22:34:57","modified_gmt":"2020-06-03T22:34:57","slug":"damaris-hill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pluckjournal.uky.edu\/welcome\/2020\/01\/14\/damaris-hill\/","title":{"rendered":"Joan Little"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Joan Little<\/h4>

\u00a0<\/p>

\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

The wind in Washington County carries.<\/span>
No one keeps to themselves. Rumors<\/span>
soil. A caterpillar looks like a worm, <\/span>
and a worm, like a snake; fact is everything that crawls ain\u2019t looking <\/span>
to be a butterfly. But, why<\/span>
take a garden rake to a bird? It\u2019s no secret, cops welcome a reason to kill anything. <\/span>
Ask the people they cage.<\/span><\/p>

Only crows bred in captivity collect<\/span>
things. Corvids, they say – nature\u2019s<\/span>
compulsive hoarders. What<\/span>
is a jeweled ring in the beak<\/span>
of a thief? A confession. What<\/span>
they come to call a hoard of crows?<\/span> A murder. We are not the only ones<\/span> to speak over our dead. How she carried on at her window, feeding the fowl first.<\/span>
This kept guards in stitches.<\/span><\/p>

In the light of day, one jailer<\/span>
rakes the rails of her cell until they bleed<\/span>
mercy on the edge of an icepick. The one<\/span>
he stores in his desk. Even when she caws, he enters. <\/span>
A man ever reach his dick for you?<\/span>
Between the bars, his hand forcing<\/span>
his worm forward, you running backwards, waving<\/span>
no, your fingers loose like laces, barricading<\/span><\/p>

what you see as precious? His whispers<\/span>
scrape the curves of Joan\u2019s<\/span>
crooked nose. His semen, a stain <\/span>
lifting each of her feathers.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Joan Little<\/span><\/p>

[Born in 1953-unknown]<\/span><\/p>

Born and raised in Washington, North Carolina, Joan was the oldest of ten children and was their caregiver until she was able to find work picking tobacco and waitressing. She graduated high school in Philadelphia. Joan spent short times away from North Carolina, but always returned home. She knew how to take things without paying for them.<\/span><\/p>

She was arrested many times.\u00a0 On August 27, 1947, she stabbed Clarence Alligood with an icepick in self-defense. Alligood used the icepick to threaten her life as he raped her. Joan maintains that she didn’t kill him, she just defend herself in an attempt to stop Alligood from raping her again. Two other women inmates were also his victims. They testified on Joan Little’s trial. She was charged with first-degree murder. In a highly publicized trial, Joan Little was not found guilty. The a capella group founded by the freedom singer Bernie Johnson Reagon, Sweet Honey in the Rock, wrote a tribute to her titled “Joanne Little” (1976).\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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—DaMaris B. Hill, PhD<\/a> is a writer. She has terminal degrees in English-Creative Writing and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Hill serves as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of\u00a0The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>an edited collection of essays, and chapbook of poems entitled\u00a0\\ Vi-z\u0259-b\u0259l \\ \\ Teks-ch\u0259rs \\<\/em>(<\/a>Visible Textures)<\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>Her memior in verse,\u00a0A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing\u00a0<\/em><\/a>(Bloomsbury 2019).<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Joan Little \u00a0 \u00a0 The wind in Washington County carries.No one keeps to themselves. Rumorssoil. A caterpillar looks like a worm, and a worm, like a snake; fact is everything that crawls ain\u2019t looking to be a butterfly. But, whytake a garden rake to a bird? It\u2019s no secret, cops welcome a reason to kill anything. Ask the people they cage. Only crows bred in captivity collectthings. Corvids, they say – nature\u2019scompulsive hoarders. Whatis a jeweled ring in the beakof a thief? A confession. Whatthey come to call a hoard of crows? A murder. We are not the only ones to speak over our dead. How she carried on at her window, feeding the fowl first.This kept guards in stitches. In the light of day, one jailerrakes the rails of her cell until they bleedmercy on the edge of an icepick. The onehe stores in his desk. Even when she caws, he enters. A man ever reach his dick for you?Between the bars, his hand forcinghis worm forward, you running backwards, wavingno, your fingers loose like laces, barricading what you see as precious? His whispersscrape the curves of Joan\u2019scrooked nose. His semen, a stain lifting each of her feathers. Joan Little [Born in 1953-unknown] Born and raised in Washington, North Carolina, Joan was the oldest of ten children and was their caregiver until she was able to find work picking tobacco and waitressing. She graduated high school in Philadelphia. Joan spent short times away from North Carolina, but always returned home. She knew how to take things without paying for them. She was arrested many times.\u00a0 On August 27, 1947, she stabbed Clarence Alligood with an icepick in self-defense. Alligood used the icepick to threaten her life as he raped her. Joan maintains that she didn’t kill him, she just defend herself in an attempt to stop Alligood from raping her again. Two other women inmates were also his victims. They testified on Joan Little’s trial. She was charged with first-degree murder. In a highly publicized trial, Joan Little was not found guilty. The a capella group founded by the freedom singer Bernie Johnson Reagon, Sweet Honey in the Rock, wrote a tribute to her titled “Joanne Little” (1976).\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 —DaMaris B. Hill, PhD is a writer. She has terminal degrees in English-Creative Writing and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Hill serves as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and African American and Africana Studies at the University of Kentucky. She is the author of\u00a0The Fluid Boundaries of Suffrage and Jim Crow: Staking Claims in the American Heartland,\u00a0an edited collection of essays, and chapbook of poems entitled\u00a0 Vi-z\u0259-b\u0259l Teks-ch\u0259rs (Visible Textures).\u00a0Her memior in verse,\u00a0A Bound Woman Is a Dangerous Thing\u00a0(Bloomsbury 2019).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,6],"tags":[34,30,35,12,13],"class_list":["post-113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eswatini-issue","category-poetry","tag-damaris","tag-eswatini-issue","tag-hill","tag-joan-little","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pluckjournal.uky.edu\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pluckjournal.uky.edu\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pluckjournal.uky.edu\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pluckjournal.uky.edu\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pluckjournal.uky.edu\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/pluckjournal.uky.edu\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":441,"href":"https:\/\/pluckjournal.uky.edu\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pluckjournal.uky.edu\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pluckjournal.uky.edu\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pluckjournal.uky.edu\/welcome\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}