Atlantis by Jake Zawlacki in response to the Southbound photograph: Jeff Rich, Bird’s Point, New Madrid Floodway, 2011 From the Watershed series Mississippi River, Wyatt, Missouri

They never said you could drive to Atlantis, but you can. Just head to East Prairie, and then take 80 into the water. You can’t miss it. They never said how it was an African American colony built in the Thirties. That it had another name: Pinhook. And that it was flooded to save a Cairo that had no pyramids. They never told them to leave, warned them, helped them, or even asked for their permission. Atlanteans weren’t Pharaohs after all. They weren’t kings. And they never said anyone still lived there, in the water, but they do. Old and young. Families. Atlantis. Pinhook. Wondering why we call it a lost city when it’s right there in front of us, submerged by our own hand.

Video: read by Jake Zawlacki

Click here to view Jeff Rich’s work

Wait by Olivia Shoup in response to the Southbound photograph: Shelby Lee Adams, Barwick Swinging Bridge, 2015 Barwick, Kentucky

I stare at the bridge and hope for the wind to come, to shake the wire sides, to see if the slats will fall into the gulley like a string of splinters. “We should head back before dark.” I’m not scared. Not of getting lost, anyway, but of being found. “I bet I can run right across.” He stands on his toes like he’s about to take off. “Just run straight through.” “I’ll whip you myself if you even try it.” I look down at his tennis shoes, laces tied to his ankles to keep the tongues from flopping. There’s still no wind. He says, “How come? Nothing would happen to me.” I’m thinking about the gulley, though—about the river below, about a story I heard when I should have been sleeping, about our father using this bridge for justice once. A homeless thief nobody missed. I grip his arm then, turn him around, and march us down the trail back toward the house, nearly a mile. He doesn’t need to know anything else about bridges today. Maybe when he’s older, I think.

Video: read by LSU MOA staff with permission from Olivia Shoup

Click here to view Shelby Lee Adams’ work

Hic Sunt Dracones by Jake Zawlacki in response to the Southbound photograph: Daniel Beltrá, Oil Spill #14, 2010 From the Spill series, Gulf of Mexico

South of the bayous and beaches of the United States, there be dragons. For eons they have dwelt beneath the crust of the Earth, their forms liquid and black and slick, chained beneath us, imprisoned. They are now free.They are the price of our bliss. We take our wealth and success, and we give the Gulf to the dragons to feast on the beasts of water and air and everything in between. To feast on rock and sand, kelp forests and coral reefs, sea turtles and pelicans, their hunger commensurate to our own. And ours is large.Most Americans don’t know the dragons of the South because they cannot see them. They are unfamiliar with the fire of their breaths and the wastes they lay. They cannot see how we brought them here, how we dug them from the Earth and released them, to the South, to the Gulf. And they are here not because they cannot live elsewhere. It is because we, as always, must do the Devil’s work. For we are the dragons’ keepers.

Video: read by Jake Zawlacki

Click here to view Daniel Beltrá’s work

Sheep's Head by Jake Zawlacki in response to the Southbound photograph: Rob Amberg, Sheep Heads, PawPaw, Madison County, North Carolina, 2013 From the Little Worlds series PawPaw, Madison County, North Carolina

I sat at a wedding. I was American and invited to things out of curiosity more than anything, but I wanted the vodka and the beshbarmak. But the beshbarmak had to have the sheep’s head in the center of the plate. It was the plate of the most prestige, of the best meat, of the softest boiled mutton. I sat and watched as waiters and waitresses delivered heaping salvers of potatoes, carrots, onions, mutton, and horse meat to tables not mine. I watched the platters shrink in diameter, the hills of food erode as they moved to less esteemed guests, to the friends of friends, and to us. The waiter set the paten down, all of us famished from the sight of meat whooshing above our heads to other tables, but our plate was small, scraps of what we had seen. We looked at each other. A man asked, Bola ma? sensing my disappointment. Boladuh, I said. But I wanted the sheep’s head.

Video: read by Jake Zawlacki

Click here to view Rob Amberg’s work

Programming sponsored by Louisiana CAT. We appreciate Louisiana CAT for also supporting LSU Museum of Art graduate assistantships. Their support allows the museum to provide arts education and career experience to students. Thank you!