Sudden Beauty
for Vicki
(Play Audio)

Southern girls like planted crops
grow succulent
with sun and well water.

Southern soil bursts open
like young girls straining
to become women quickly.

Southern girls like harvested crops
ravished
for the tastes of men.



Poems or Stories can not be reproduced in any manner without the written
permission of Fabu.

This Woman I Love
for Effie Florida Cunningham Partee
(Play Audio)

Down a winding dirt road
with rust colored rocks
and glistening beige pebbles
is where my Grandmother lived.

She woke up to clear blue skies
and billowing white clouds
My Grandmother went to sleep
when the shimmering sun was just down
and the still stars were floating outward.

Yet all the beauty
of Mississippi land
cannot nearly compare
with this woman I love.

Poems or Stories can not be reproduced in any manner without the written
permission of Fabu.

You Fit Me
(Play Audio)

A missing puzzle piece
found and fitted.

A key in a lock
that turns easily.

A right amount of current
flowing through prongs
snug in a socket.

You fit me.

Poems or Stories can not be reproduced in any manner without the written
permission of Fabu.

Telling Our Stories
(Play Clip of Story)

Each of us has a story to tell.  Both telling and listening to our
stories are important connections between people and form the
basis of healthy, wonderful human relationships.  If the person
is five or fifty, each has their own personal story that begs for a
listening audience.  There were three people who told me stories
as a child.  The first was my father, Herman Grant Carter, who
was the parent who tucked me into bed and told me bedtime
stories.  He would reach up and grab a volume from The Child
Craft series and read to me.  I was eager to read the stories my
Daddy told me.  When I could read and looked for the stories, I
discovered that they were not in a book but rather his stories
came from his imagination.  The second person to tell me stories
was my maternal grandmother, Effie Florida Cunningham Partee.
When I was visiting her in Mississippi she would tell her
grandchildren stories about slavery and life in the South.  When
I followed her around the yard as she tended to her flowers, she
would tell me even more stories about when she was a child.  My
grandmother made me see life from the viewpoint of an artist.
Lastly, I attended a very small church in Fayetteville, North Carolina
before my father was sent to Viet Nam and we moved permanently
to Memphis, Tennessee.  There was a minister in the church who
was elderly.  He told all the children his ghost stories from Texas
and we were fascinated by this master storyteller whose stories
came alive in his voice and in the movements of his body.  This
is the beginning of the story “The Day The Sun Refused to Shine”
and it is based on my Grandma Effie’s stories about Mississippi.
These people formed me into a storyteller.