Eulogy for a Snake Handler Killed by a Canebrake

Brothers and sisters, the first time I seen Buford Shoupe was 1953,
in a brush arbor up on Hungry Mother Mountain.
Me and a gang of boys I’m shamed to admit, hallelujah,
what intimately knew the devil
walked up that mountain in 1953 drunk—
we’s looking for trouble cause we heard down at the gas station
that they was gonna be some kinda homecoming
where them crazy Jesus Only people dance with snakes.
And I’m sure all you brothers and sisters
that knew Buford Lee also know that the devil
that was in me and them boys that night
found just what he was a looking for
cause there ain’t nobody, praise God, that could trouble
the devil more than our own Brother Buford Lee Shoupe.
I pray you bear with me now cause I got to tell you
what I saw when we come up that mountain.
It was late, so the brush arbor was already lit and ash
like black snow was darkening everybody against the orange glow.
The way we come up, there was Brother Buford standing
afront of that fire, ash swarming around his head,
and both hands held up to the sky with six-foot canebrakes,
two in each hand, wild, striking out into the night like bolts of lightning
while Brother Buford danced and sang: He’s God in Alabama.
He’s God in Tennessee. He’s God in North Carolina. He’s God all over me.
Brothers and sisters, Buford Lee Shoupe was so perfect
in the anointing that he was gathering canebrakes and copperheads
easy as a boy might walk out to the front porch and get a load of firewood.
I don’t rightly know if I can tell you what I felt seeing a man
like that, all shiny and moist with the Holy Ghost—
but I can sure enough tell you that it changed my life.
That night, we set in the back of his pickup with a torchlight
reading the red words where Jesus hisself said
He that believeth shall take up serpents,
and listening to the soft sound of them snakes in their boxes
slide over one another, crisp and filmy like gold-edged pages from the Bible.
I want you all to know, here today, that before I was a man of God
I was a man of whiskey; I was a man of easy women and gambling;
I was a man who’d been shot and done shot back, and I had no fear
of the Lord until I walked up Hungry Mother Mountain in 1953
and saw Brother Buford Lee Shoupe walk through fire,
drink strychnine and dance with snakes clutched to his chest
like a bunch of wildflowers—then set down with friends,
drink him a Coca-Cola and eat three pimiento cheese sandwiches.
Sweet Jesus saved my soul from eternal damnation that night,
and when Brother Buford hisself baptized
me three weeks later in Two Run Creek
there was six state patrol cars parked by the river
just to see my head dipped in that red water.
Now I got right here hung around my neck the very snake
that bit Brother Buford and put him in this casket.
And I know some of you are thinking maybe we should
take this here snake by the tail and slam its head up against the altar—
But I’m here, brothers and sisters, to tell you otherwise
cause there ain’t one of us here that can explain God’s ways.
Paul tells us the last enemy that shall be defeated is death,
and, praise God, we ought not remember Brother Buford
suffering with the terrible pain this snake afflicted
when it sank fangs into his cheek
easy as a child biting into a Easter egg.
We ought not remember how it took three men
to work these hooked teeth outta his face.
We ought not remember Brother Buford’s head
swelled up black and green like a rotten watermelon,
or his tongue falling outta his mouth whenever he tried to talk,
gray and thick like a slug that’s been dipped in salt.
What we got to remember, praise God, is that Brother Buford
died in the faith, refusing doctors and painkillers.
Brothers and sisters, we can suffer the laughs
and the name-calling. We can endure the poisoned body
and the pain of losing our loved ones—
all we got to remember is that Brother Buford
defeated death by this viper’s sweet kiss.

* Delisa Mulkey is currently working in the PhD program at Georgia State with David Bottoms, Beth Gylys, and Leon Stokesbury. Her poems have been published in Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, Nimrod, Rosebud, and The Chattahoochee Review. She is also a recipient of the Ruth Lily Fellowship awarded by Poetry and the 2005 Writer’s Exchange prize from Poets & Writers Magazine. "Eulogy for a Snake Handler Killed by a Canebrake" originally appeared in Gettysburg Review.