White blood A lyric of Virginia

Prelude You're on a train & your ancestors are in the Quiet Car. The Quiet Car is locked with a password you can't decrypt. You're a professional password decrypter, but your ancestors are demolition experts. You're wearing black tactical gear & your ancestors are wearing black tactical gear. You're dashing through each compartment, slamming doors open, while your ancestors lay small explosives. As heat expands within the carriage, you escape through a picture window. You climb to the top of the train & your ancestors rappel down the sides. You're rappelling down one side of the train when you glimpse your ancestors above you. They leap from carriage to carriage as if weightless, as if drifting, as if curling tongues of snow. You cling to the side of the train as each of your ancestors lifts away from you. They float into the cloud of themselves. In the rushing light, you perceive them as hundreds slow snake doctors. O -- you begin. "The Shop at Monticello" I'm a black body in this Commonwealth, which turned black bodies into money. Now, I have money to spend on little trinkets to remind me of this fact. I'm a money machine & my body constitutes the common wealth. I spend & spend in order to support this. I support this mountain with my black money. Strange mountain in late bloom. Strange mansion built on mountains of wealth. I spend so much, I'm late for the tour where I'm a blooming black dollar sign. I look good in the Dome Room prowling its high-gloss floor. It's common to desire such flooring for my own home, but owning a home is still strange. My blackness makes strange tools for a living, rakes the strangeness like dirt. I like to rake my hands over merchandise: bayberry votives, English hyssop in crisp sachets. I like this Engraved Pewter Bookmark so much suddenly I line up for it, clenching my upright fist. I pay cash to prove myself no shoplifter. Still, I abscond with my black feelings: crisp toast points dunked in fig jam. On one hand, I must think very highly of myself to come here. Then again, that sounds like something I would say. "Message from the Free Smiths of Louisa County" We weren't truly free until we read the Amendment ourselves all the way to Lincoln's signature, dark vines gathering over the page. A. Lincoln said we should go forth, leaving bondage forever but we weren't truly free until we signed our own names & read them back to ourselves. Our names, not our marks dark vines gathered at X . Lincoln's signature looked so calm, a brown river of stones worn smooth with patience. We had no time to catch up. We weren't truly free until we'd scaled the high turret of B or unlatched the strap where H buckles itself. Still, it took years to reach Lincoln's signature, dark vines gathering. Our jagged serifs serrated the pages we signed. We wrote out our wills. You write poems about Lincoln, dark little vines of until . But we weren't truly free. Read the amendment. Excerpted from White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia by Kiki Petrosino All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.