WEBVTT

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Soil rising.

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And this begins with an epigraph
from Natasha Trethewey, which

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reads the ghost of history
lies down beside me,

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rolls over, pins me
beneath the heavy arm.

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My husband's mother wanted
to take the family portrait

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at Carnton plantation.

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I was the only person she
called to ask if it was OK.

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She said, we could redeem
the land with our picture.

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My brown skin acrostic to
the row of their white.

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She said, can we just
let the past be the past?

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I was silent.

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And my cell phone glowing
warm against my cheek.

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I was driving red light then go.

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She said it's practically
in my backyard.

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And that her boys played on
buckled fields of green graves

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growing up.

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There are so many fun
places to shoot oh,

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and that big
Magnolia is in bloom.

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Fragrant milky petals
and waxy greens

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by the red brick house
in the large front porch

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with rocking chairs
tipping back and fourth

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above the purple stains
of confederate blood.

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I said it was fine as long as
we weren't by the slave cabins.

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And she laughed and
I laughed, which is

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to say I wasn't joking at all.

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She kept saying redeem as if to
say we'll make it acceptable,

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restore, and atone
buy it back paid off.

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Redeem redeeming,
she said again.

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Her voice swelling
like she was singing

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and as if we really could.

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How do we stand on
the dead and smile?

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I carry so many black
souls in my skin sometimes.

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I swear it vibrates like
a tuning fork when struck.

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A staff officer wrote
the wounded and hundreds

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were brought to the
house during the battle,

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and all the night after.

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And when the noble old
house could hold no more,

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and the yard was appropriated
until the wounded and dead

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filled that.

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The plantation was
named after cairns.

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Prophetic stones marking a
mass grave still speaking.

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How the body leaves
its mark on wood,

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plum dark, and greasy from the
shots stifled and amputated.

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My tongue was caught off
when she asked me again.

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Are you sure it's OK?

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I was waiting at the red light.

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My cell phone burned from
the hot battery in my hand.

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Even the dark
layers of dirt must

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testify at the
Battle of Franklin

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turn the farmstead
into a field hospital.

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Thousands of casualties during
the war for states' rights,

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the brochure said.

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And now it's sold out
for summer weddings

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with mint juleps and
sweating silver cups.

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Cannon burst from weekend
reenactments and photo shoots

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for graduation.

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Pregnant couples
in my new family.

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It's raining.

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The photographer is
snapping and directing us

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toward the daffodils.

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The shutter opening and
closing like a tiny guillotine

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clicking.

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I'm staring at the black
eye clutching my smile.

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Light drizzle turning
my pressed hair

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slowly back to curls
the water percolating

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weathering its way down to
the bright green top soil.

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Fertile with the past
organic and holy wetness

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Dixie myth mixing with iron clay
aluminum and revision romancing

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the dirt and undead, turning
the silt in the subsoil steeping

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father down deep, deep into
the dark pocket of Earth

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to the parent material.

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Layers of large unbroken rocks
down to the antebellum base

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the bedrock of Southern amnesia.

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Can we just let the past
be the past, she said.

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Her voice swelling
like she was singing

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and as if we really could.

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In the portrait, my
husband is holding my hand.

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His hand that dug
for bullets as a boy.

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