
Johnsonville State Park

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as in complete
destruction, Sherman’s neckties
with hogs shot
among burning bales
of hay, like
that day when
Atlanta left earth
ashes upward while
babies and old
people cried for
past lives lost
plantations and emancipated
slaves following sky’s
drinking gourd, and
we say that
violence isn’t the
answer, except that
it was, and
the Union survived
This poem is called Maggots,
Samantha stands in front of the
classroom with a sly smile. Her
piece inspired by historic conflict,
skips Gettysburg, Antietam, and
all the words of war. No rebel yell,
or regiments, she leaves nurse
descriptions and widow tears for
other poems to divulge. Starts
at the end, she speaks her black
beginning, maggots chewing,
spewing flesh of men without faces,
corpses all in their places for the feast.
She maintains throughout, that nature
intended such death, that it was all
meant to be. Not for North or South,
but for the legless larva to probe
darkness, with their bloody glee.
state of grace, country faith
Miley, Dolly, Shiloh, and all that
Civil War remembrance of rocking
chairs, old hickory, days of yore
and what of it? might find out
let late southern June, smell
of mowed lawn, magnolia trees
warm air breeze fill me please