March 10: Isms and Phobias, Natasha Trethewey, "South"

America has a lot of problems right now.  Racism.  Sexism.  Homophobia.  Xenophobia.  Islamophobia.  There are so many -isms and -phobias running rampant in my country that it depresses me, but we can't get around it.

Of course, the United States was built on the land and backs of oppressed people.  Native Americans.  African Americans.  Chinese Americans.  Mexican Americans.  That's a part of our history.  Can't get around that, either.

Saint Marty isn't a big fan of Gone With the Wind, either.

South

by:  Natasha Trethewey

          Homo sapiens is the only species          to suffer psychological exile.
                  —E. O. Wilson

I returned to a stand of pines,

                            bone-thin phalanx

 

flanking the roadside, tangle

                            of understory—a dialectic of dark

 

and light—and magnolias blossoming

                            like afterthought: each flower

 

a surrender, white flags draped

                            among the branches. I returned

 

to land’s end, the swath of coast

                            clear cut and buried in sand:

 

mangrove, live oak, gulfweed

                            razed and replaced by thin palms—

 

palmettos—symbols of victory

                            or defiance, over and over

 

marking this vanquished land. I returned

                            to a field of cotton, hallowed ground—

 

as slave legend goes—each boll

                            holding the ghosts of generations:

 

those who measured their days

                            by the heft of sacks and lengths

 

of rows, whose sweat flecked the cotton plants

                            still sewn into our clothes.

 

I returned to a country battlefield

                            where colored troops fought and died—

 

Port Hudson where their bodies swelled

                            and blackened beneath the sun—unburied

 

until earth’s green sheet pulled over them,

                            unmarked by any headstones.

 

Where the roads, buildings, and monuments

                            are named to honor the Confederacy,

 

where that old flag still hangs, I return

                            to Mississippi, state that made a crime

 

of me—mulatto, half-breed—native

                            in my native land, this place they’ll bury me.