Ode to Billy Joe and the faceless manikins
I loved writing this post in 2015. Hopefully you will enjoy it as well.
It was the other day, June 3, 2015 to be precise, when Paul Morris, a fellow MFA Goucher graduate, reminded me of Bobby Gentry’s “Ode to Billy Joe.” Forty-eight years ago, on June 3, 1967, Gentry penned her masterpiece. How could I allow decades to pass before revisiting the rhythmic, haunting lyrics depicting the day when Billy Joe MacAllister jumped off the 
Tallahatchie Bridge? Gentry and I had a reunion of sorts. I began listening to a YouTube performance of her “Ode to Billy Joe;” over and over, perhaps twenty to thirty times. It was as addictive as my Oxycodone pain-poppin’ pills that kept my back from breaking apart in the hills of southern Illinois, some five-hundred miles north of the Tallahatchie Bridge. Maybe the passage of time has blessed me with a deeper understanding of Gentry’s lyrical gem. Or perhaps years of therapy has graced my psychic with insights…
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