Panel 1. February 1818
Black runs wild in Talbot.
Runs like the river runs
Runs like a child
The women do chores
In the middle of this.
Do the bulk of black living.
They hold stars on their heads
Call the gold grain
Or call the gold East
Call it ripe for the pluck, or
Safe Passage. Say, make a move
And call it gone
So much black everywhere
Ubiquitous on trees
Grows in a buzz
On elbows, streaks
The reeds, and strides across
The plains. A crooked
Hand out of the sand
Black hand of God, Save us.
But men approach
Holding what could be shovels
Or rifles, trying to dig
Or shoot God gone,
Right out of sight.
And still, here is this
Baby, born unto this land
In these matchstick
Boxes, born unto the silt
As bold as black lightning
Or a black tree. He’s a quake.
Cracking the Earth
From limb to limb.
Panel 3. The Flogging
Colonel Lloyd make the babies watch
Colonel Lloyd try to break the babies,
makes everyone watch
Colonel Lloyd beat Millie until the sunset
so everyone see how a woman spirit get broke
Everyone see Colonel Lloyd
Everyone’s eyes wide to the white
Wide as Colonel Lloyd’s buck teeth
Everyone watch Millie tug at a tree
Everyone see Millie wrap herself around a gray trunk
Colonel Lloyd, red as the red, red as Millie’s dress
Colonel Lloyd’s red drips to the ground and muddies his boots
Everyone see Colonel Lloyd slip and Millie holdin’ on
Hold on, girl, hold on
All the lights is on and his whip is glowin’
But everyone see the brilliance on the top of Millie’s head
Everyone see Millie hold the hand of God in that there tree,
And so do Colonel Lloyd
And so do Colonel Lloyd
Panel 30. Face to Face: Lawrence and the Douglass Death Mask
Feel the comb, the scissors shearing
Your goat-colored hair. Feel Mr. Dunbar
Lathering your face with rubber, and
Petroleum jelly tears. He cries into the salve
On your face and fight. He rubs you opal
So not to scrub the eloquence off your skin.
Your swollen mouth still chewing chains
Or chewing granite. Your mouth, full of the print
From last night’s speech, wants to rebuff:
Do you mean to lock me in plaster?
Do you mean to cripple this posture?
This death is mine to own and preserve.
Your skin, no longer slavery’s dockyard
Nor its blistering cannons. No longer the bright
Brown of a town hall’s pews. Your mask, white
And crusted, will stiffen into accomplishment,
Into hallmark, into a lion’s thick hide
And heavy muscle. When the funeral beckons,
Your stern face will startle the church’s nave
Until the guise rests in your home, in the hallway
Near your swift and quiet collapse.
O Frederick Douglass, Come home and settle,
With a body, a pipe, and chuckle for your dear
Miss Pitts. Rock back and forth so the floor planks
Creak as your foot taps an anthem. To the seascape,
To the searchlight, the beat guiding your first wife.
She waits with your mother on a road the ice and chill
Of this country cannot reach. This death mask, holds
Your self-made life and labor, validates the extremes
Of manhood, and dignifies your slumber.