My father was one of the Georgia Tann babies,” says Memphis poet Michael Graber. “Georgia Tann sold 100 babies. Joan Crawford got two of them. Basically, my father was stolen from his country mother and sold to the highest bidder. So the ideas of mistaken identity and abandonment are things that I understand on an almost genetic level.”
Graber, author of the recently released book The Last Real Medicine Show, leans forward, folding his hands prayerfully on the sleek desk where he conducts business as creative director of Lokian Interactive. “Like anybody who chooses to live in their hometown,” Graber says, “I’m haunted by specters. The voices in my poems are Memphis voices. They are [often] Christian voices, because in the South you just can’t get around the cross. And in Memphis you can’t get.
