Raising a Humid Flag by Thylias Moss
Raising a Humid Flag
Thylias MossEnough women over thirty are at Redbones
for the smell of Dixie Peach to translate the air.
I drink when I’m there because you must have
some transparency in this life and you can’t see
through the glass till it’s empty.
Of course I get next to men with broad feet
and bull nostrils to ward off isolation.
You go to Redbones after you’ve been
everywhere else and can see the rainbow
as fraud, a colorful frown.
The best part is after midnight
when the crowd at its thickest raises
a humid flag and hotcombed hair reverts
to nappy origins. I go to Redbones
to put an end to denial.
Dixie Peach is a heavy pomade like
canned-ham gelatin. As it drips
down foreheads and necks, it’s like tallow
dripping down candles in sacred places.
SELECTED BY DERRICK AUSTIN
I’ve chosen “Raising a Humid Flag” by Thylias Moss from her 1990 collection At Redbones (but it’d probably be easier to find in Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities’ Red Dress Code: New and Selected Poems).
It’s a poem I admire for its lusciousness, the heat and stickiness. It’s a poem about loneliness and trying to get over loneliness.
It’s the holiness of summertime and sweaty flesh and getting some.
ABOUT DERRICK AUSTIN
Derrick Austin is the author of Tenderness (BOA Editions, 2021), winner of the 2020 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, and Trouble the Water (BOA Editions, 2016). His third collection, This Elegance, is forthcoming in Spring 2026.
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SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in At Redbones by Thylias Moss, published by Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1990. (Available on: Amazon • Bookshop)
DESCRIPTION
“A powerful blend of riveting imagery and dead-on social commentary. Moss moves skillfully back and forth between the longing for mythic and religious transformation and the reality of daily life, with its constant puncturing of hope and expectation…At Redbones, it crackles with wit and wild surmise. —Sue Standing, Boston Review” (Source)
ABOUT THYLIAS MOSS
Thylias Moss was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on February 27, 1954. She received a BA from Oberlin College in 1981 and an MA from the University of New Hampshire in 1983. Moss is the author of several poetry collections, including Wannabe Hoochie Mama Gallery of Realities’ Red Dress Code: New & Selected Poems (Persea Books, 2016); Tokyo Butter: A Search for Forms of Deidre (Persea Books, 2006); Last Chance for the Tarzan Holler (Persea Books, 1998); and Hosiery Seams on a Bowlegged… (more)
Read more poems by Thylias Moss • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
- This is Day 07 of Poems We Carry, celebrating the 20th anniversary of Read A Little Poetry—a living archive I’ve nurtured for two decades. For this milestone series, I invited writers I deeply admire to share poems that have meant something to them over time.
- Explore other works in pursuit of: acceptance • community • realism • Or browse the index
- If this work resonates with you, please consider supporting the archive. Thank you for reading.
