Blue-Tail Fly
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Vievee Francis
Vievee Francis is a well-known poet in the Detroit area whose poems have appeared in numerous journals. This is her first full-length book of poetry.
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Book preview
Blue-Tail Fly - Vievee Francis
Way
BLUE - TAIL FLY
VIEVEE FRANCIS
© 2006 by Wayne State University Press, Detroit, Michigan 48201. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced without formal permission. Manufactured in the United States of America.
15 14 13 12 11 7 6 5 4 3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Francis, Vievee.
Blue-tail fly / Vievee Francis.
p. cm. — (Made in Michigan writers series)
ISBN 0-8143-3323-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. African American soldiers—Poetry. 2. Mexican War, 1846–1848—Poetry.
3. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Poetry. I. Title. II. Series.
PS3606.R3653B68 2006
811’.6—dc22
2005035890
ISBN-13: 978-0-8143-3323-5 ISBN-10: 0-8143-3323-0
Names of slaves and infantrymen are both fictional and/or historical compilations.
This book is supported by the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs.
∞ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Design by Kachergis Book Design
Typeset by Maya Rhodes
Composed in 8.75/13 Walbaum LT
E-book ISBN: 978-0-8143-3521-5
This book is dedicated to
George F. Francis III
And not till then saw he the Other Side
Or would accept the shade.
Sidney Lanier
The Dying Words of Stonewall Jackson
Contents
The Scale of Empire
AFTERMATH
1880, The Binding Tie
The Finishing Thoughts of Festus Spencer as He Looks into the Camera
I
Frederick Douglass Speaks before the Anti–Mexican War Abolitionists
Ample Cause of War
General Taylor Convinces Himself That He Is for War
Doubt
Letter to the Governor of Texas
Notes from Officer Hitchcock’s Lost Leather Journal
Liberation
By the end
Three Hundred and Seventy-Two Miles from Home
Pokagon Accepts Colonel Taylor’s Invitation
Colonel Zachary Taylor Has Pokagon for Tea
The Escarpment
In Private Conversation: Buchanan to Like Minds
The Book Speaks of Pretenders
South of Houston
II
Civil Beginnings
Darling Wife
Grey Jebediah
The Bone Boiler
Shadows
1864, Fragments of a Camp near Yorktown
1864, A Pocket Full of Rye
Snake Swamp
1863, Walt Whitman Reads to the Limbless, Dying
Linsey-Woolsey
1864, Dear Mother
Gettysburg: Blue and Grey
A Singular Dispersion over Franklin, Tennessee
Lincoln Dreams of Sarah, the Servant
If Not for You
1863, Detroit Riots, Again
1864, Dear Son
III
Private Athens Descries
Hannibal of Athens, Georgia
White Glove Test
Private Smith’s Primer
Br’er Rabbit in Chickamauga
Drummer Boy
Interview: Survivor, Fort Pillow
A Second Dream of Sarah
Nigger Pine
Lincoln Speaks after the Bones Are Thrown
The White Immensities
Notes on the Poems
Credits and Acknowledgments
The Scale of Empire
Yet the most distinctive, and perhaps the most impressive, characteristic of American scenery is its wildness.
Thomas Cole, founder, Hudson River School
The wood that engulfs
an empire of stone
cares only to maintain itself,
to green again the decadent
progressions—discovery,
desperation. Our delusion:
digging into the earth
that submits only temporarily.
Eventually, the vine creeps across
the well-swept patio, up the walls,
then through, under the iron rails.
The overwrought towers