note on some necessities--it was necessary that Thomas Jefferson have children
with a slave. Sally Heming was her name. It was necessary that this fact
would not become verified to history until our own day.
And the following poem is necessary.
new voice on The Time Garden--Sharon Doubiago

Sally Heming's Dress

When I put on Sally Heming's white dress
I found myself climbing the highest building in Charlottesville.
I pulled it off and draped it over the steeple cross.
When the sun rose I was standing there naked, the father
of my children. And when the sun set
I was the moon and all the stars, the father
of my country.

This doesn't mean I don't love
Thomas Jefferson in his pants.
Of course only in Heaven
does he get to wear a dress.
Here even the President can only lie down on the bed,
drape it over himself and sigh
what am I to do with this?

When he puts the cigar in her vagina
the highest building in Virginia
collapses brick by brick. The Dress
goes up in flames, semen of sunrise, noose
strung from the oak around his neck, bloody cock
in my black mouth.

But then the moon rises again, Virgin impenetrable.
I step through the sky in my dress
issuing forth all the Union and Confederate Dead
in their dresses.

(thanks to the Charlottesville artist Todd Murphy and Jack Hirschman)

Sharon Doubiago

from Christina Pacosz:
"Good to read Sharon on the site! Welcome to the garden, old friend!"

note from Moira B. 
Sharon's poetry is powerful and charismatic.  Although I have read only a few of her poems, 
I enjoyed her use of words -- almost as weapons -- to make her points. 
I simply did not grasp the Jefferson poem.  The first stanza seemed to be in Jefferson's voice.  
Then the one stanza seemed to be from Sally's POV -- with the bloody cock in her black mouth.  
Why was the cock bloody?  And then the part about the union and confederate soldiers 
threw me completely off base because Sally and Jefferson lived long before the War between the States. 
I know the "dress" was a metaphor for something but I could not figure out what.

Jan, a lurker?

Gosh, Klyd. So much good stuff on here, really. I have been quietly reading since I got back from the last hike. Moira, that's a brave note. I salute you. I have read a couple of Sharon's books, and I would say that usually when she says "I" she means herself, Sharon Doubiago. Sometimes however she uses herself in a fictional, even mythic, situation. For example, her poems "Crazy Horse" and "Free Him Now." In both of these, "I" becomes the lover of a man that she, SD, could not meet (Crazy Horse) or has not met (Leonard Peltier). (See the introduction to her Greatest Hits from Pudding House.)I think mythical is closer than "fictional" since I think of these poems as happening somewhere else, not on the physical plane. Even in these days when an overwhelming number of poems are clearly autobiographical, poetry does remain a "supreme fiction," using "stories" to get at the truth. The story here is surreal, or magical realism, a form of narrative where the events are not only untrue, but impossible. I am out of time though I have a lot more to say. But as to what Sally Heming's dress is a metaphor of--perhaps it's a symbol as much as a metaphor: look at what happens when she takes it off. Damn, I must go. Janice Faye Fiering

Moira thanks Jan
Jan's comments on Dress were interesting and helpful.  She said my comment
was brave, but it wasn't courage, just simple minded curiosity.  
I have a LOT to learn about poetry in comparison to everybody else 
with work posted on TTG.  I should have confessed that shortfall 
instead of saying I didn't "get" the poem.  
The energy and talent on TTG keep me coming back for more, 
and push me to explore your poets' index.

Moira B.

I am disappointed that Jan did not have time to give us more of her reading of "Sally Heming's Dress." I agree with her that the speaker in the first stanza is the poet. Sharon D. So we start with fiction. Sharon D. has not in fact put on Sally Heming's white dress. This is not going to be a truthful poem, except in a mythic way. We have a surreal image. The idea that she could climb the outside of the building is far out enough that humor is introduced into these very heavy proceedings. The white woman climbing the highest building in Charlottesville in a black woman's, a slave's, mythic dress. Then she hangs it on the steeple cross. The building, as the highest in Charlottesville, stands as a symbol of power, white man's power; the steeple cannot escape being phallic. Having gained the prominence, the merging of white woman with black goes a step further when she becomes "the father of her children." She has to become "naked" for her maleness to be revealed. She has to take off Sally Heming's Dress. At this point Sally Heming's Dress becomes a large symbol, I think, for the aspects of duality that we must "put on" when we are born into a dualistic world. We become "prisoners of gender" (Norman Mailer's term I think) and prisoner's of our race or the status, high or low, which defines our political economic potential.

Then the poet (and she certainly may be speaking for Sally Heming's here too) acknowledges some contentment with being in our dualistic situation. She loves Thomas Jefferson in his pants. This poem might not work if Sally Heming had been the slave of a less attractive man. Jefferson, to my mind, is the greatest of the founding "fathers." His intellectual opposition to slavery among many traits of a mind that is essential to the U.S. at its best. We are where we are. The male too can escape gender, but only "in Heaven." "Here even the president" (the president being the male of males, the white male of white males) can only be confused with his femininity. Now the merging is of one president into another. In this poem's mythic space they are the same. William Jefferson Clinton, who had his own dress problems, famously inserted a cigar into Monica Lewinsky's vagina, tho he refused to insert the more natural phallus there. In this magic scene, Clinton's act brings down the tower, now grown to the tallest building in Virginia (and clearly coming to stand for absolute power). The poet has become now a black man, lynched Old South style, severed cock in his own mouth. The Clinton-Lewensky fellatio transformed into Sharon-Sally Jefferson-Clinton lynched as a black man. The dualities--of power-powerless, black-white, slave-free, male-female--fallen. The civil war is indeed in between the two time periods, but the poet is "in heaven" now, above all that-"Virgin impenetrable"-and there she has the power not just to "issue forth" those who died in the struggle over slavery, but to issue them forth above gender, "in their dresses." A very powerful poem that wouldn't work at all without the touches of humor.

Klyd

We got a theme! Here is Christina:

                  Celia Speaks*
 
 
           He bought me, he said, for a wife
           never mind my black skin.
           I'd give him what he wanted 
           without all the fuss.        
           That night I climbed into his cart 
           the stars were sharp as knives.
           Before he took me home
           he bent me over the buckboard 
           and took me there. 
           His bulk smothered me.
 
           Not that he cared. The cool night air 
           licked my skin and I wanted to forget 
           his hands. The secrets 
           they plundered. I watched
           the stars in God's firmament
           while splinters from the wagon
           made their way into my flesh.
           He was going at it, my new master, 
           Mr. Newsome, sir. When he finished 
           with me and picked up the horse's reins
               
           I huddled in the back of that clattering wagon
           wondering how the stars had a place in heaven            
           and I did not. My place was under him.
           His daughters wasted no time in hating me
           though I cooked the food they ate, and his, too.
           I dreamed of poisoning them all
           but how?  He built a brick cabin
           and put me in it like a piece of furniture.  
           He was the wolf at the door and I was his sow.  
           His breath was a hot gust. 
 
           I couldn't keep him out. Until George.
           A man with skin the color of my own.  A slave, too. 
           My children loved him. He was the daddy
           they never knew though their own father lived 
           only thirty paces from our door.  
           George wanted me all to himself
           my belly big with a third child. 
           His, Marse Newsome's, I didn't know.  
           That's when the trouble started.  
           George shouting I can't take anymore
           and me wanting to shout right back 
           How can I do anything else? 
           That old white man owned me
           and him, too. Did he forget?
           I bit back my words and tasted blood.
           That man was headstrong but I loved him.
           He forced me to choose. Me, who had no choice.
           Oh, I begged his daughters
           to make Newsome stop. Told them I was sick.
           But those women were his property, too.
 
           He was the one who put the food I fixed
           on their table and the clothes on all our backs,
           though my gingham smocks were his to cast off
           whenever he chose. Those white women 
           chased me away from his door
           shouting Dirty nigger whore.
           So I found a stout stick.
           When he slipped out of his house
           that night and refused to leave 
           until I laid down with him
 
           I hit him upside his head.
           He fell down dead. I killed him. Yes.  
           I could feel the hempen rope 
           and thought to burn that white man up.
           That's what I did so help me God.
           I had a time getting him into the fireplace
           and running outside for wood.
           Wagon staves it was
           which seemed fitting.
 
           I had to keep that fire hot
           if I wanted his carcass gone by morning
           and I did.  
           Poking here and there, pushing 
           what was left of him 
           into the flames.
           He made an awful stink.
           My children woke and watched.
           Of course they cried
           it was their daddy in the fire.
           I told them Hush up
           go on back to sleep!
           They heard the hardrock edge in my voice  
           and laid down on their pallets.  
           I don't know if they slept.
           I forgot about them until the nasty business
           was done. Then I fixed corn pone
           with drizzled molasses as dark as our skins
           for breakfast. Those two licked 
           their bowls clean
             
           and didn't say a word.
           I won't say if George helped me or not.
           What does it matter?
           He was the black Judas 
           who betrayed me the next day
           so scared for his own skin 
           he forgot how much mine had pleasured him.  
           He knew and I did, too, that no one 
           could have me but the rope. My neck
           in the noose a dry twig.

Christina Pacosz
 
*Based on the book, Celia, a Slave, Melton A. McLaurin, 
University of Georgia Press, 1991.  
A true account of events occurring in Callaway County, 
Missouri in 1855
This poem won a prize in a contest at Negative Capability
but that magazine never purblished it.

I will too say Jan is back!

I don't mean that poems need to be cinematic always, but I do like it when poems are cinematic, as Christina's "Celia Speaks" is. Eventhough the grim scene with the fire at the end is probably more like recent horror and horror-comedy scenes than Hitchcock, I do think of Hitchcock there, of his ability to show the mundane in the horrible.

I had a time getting him into the fireplace
and running outside for wood.
Wagon staves it was
which seemed fitting.

I had to keep that fire hot
if I wanted his carcass gone by morning
and I did.

Then we move on to the children:

I told them Hush up
go on back to sleep!
They heard the hardrock edge in my voice
and laid down on their pallets.
I don't know if they slept.
I forgot about them until the nasty business
was done. Then I fixed corn pone
with drizzled molasses as dark as our skins
for breakfast. Those two licked
their bowls clean

The cinematic treatment, the mundane moving the horrible along, pulls us back, until it is over. Then for days after the reading the horror of Celia's situation unfolds as the poem echoes in my mind. I've said this before: I think it is the sign of a very good poem, to hang around the mind a day or two after you read it, still unfolding.

Klyd, I can agree with all you say about Sharon Doubiago's "Sally Heming's Dress." I do think it is helpful to refer to duality, and transcending duality, in looking at the poem. I guess, however, I see more of a definite feminist twist to the poem than you present. Certainly males are treated generously, but in the end it is a big old shining girl with the power.

Still addressing Klyd, I noticed in your poem, , "Folk From New York at Simon the Short Optometrist Shop," the way you (or the speaker in the poem) is trying on a pair of glasses when he thinks he can read the mind of the sophisticated male who didn't "seem to hate country music badly enough." And you let that be revealed later, with the revelation of the other pair of glasses he was trying on, the ones that show us immediately becoming what we mock. Then, in his saying he doesn't see "how anyone could afford to wear those," he is acknowledging that he has himself just mocked, in a sophisticated way, the sophisticated mockers and so has turned himself into one of them. It is not only the ten thousand dollars that makes those particular glasses too expensive, for "anyone."

Jan F. F.

we do have a theme! 

  Moira B. be back!

  "This is such a coincidence!! The book I've been working on has a poem 
  in it about a black man hung from the river bridge, falsely accused and lynched 
  for raping a white woman. Another true story. (injustice is one of the wolves 
  I feed.)

  Christina's poem was so provocative, coming as it did after Sharon's. Mine is 
  nowhere near the caliber of theirs, though." 

   FATAL FLAW written in memory of a photograph 
  taken of a young black man falsely accused of rape and lynched in rural Kansas. 
  Name unknown, date late nineteenth century. 

I have the dubious distinction
of being the only man of color
to be lynched in this upstanding county.
See that faded picture there?
That's me in my finest hour,
hanging like a beacon
from that bridge across their river
where the ferry used to be.
I was an educated man,
unusual for my time, where
men of red or black could seldom
sign their names except with an X,
hand guided by some equally ill-educated
white man. So there I was,
a nigger they considered uppity,
whose mother was a full blood
Cherokee to make my situation worse.

I had the fatal flaw
of thinking I could outwork any man
regardless of his color. So I stopped
at a ramshackle farm in search of work
and thereby hangs the tale, and me
from this damn bridge.
That worn out toothless farm wife said
I raped her. Hell, I bet she hadn't
known a man in years, especially
not her husband who spent all his time
in town carousing, or so the story
goes. I didn't touch that woman,
but you already guessed that. Wish you
could have seen the black and Indian
blood pour from my nose and mouth
when that crowd of drunken white trash
beat me and threw a strong hemp rope
around my neck while that lying
woman screamed for Jesus
on the sidelines. Those lousy sonsabitches
didn't even ask my name. I remember
seeing black limbs on the river, eddying
on muddy currents, thrashing for a foothold
in the water as my own legs thrashed
in that thin air. Goddamn their souls!
They left my body hanging off that bridge
until it rotted. I became
their proudest moment, an object lesson
for their children and any stranger
passing through the area. After several weeks
they buried me along the river
in an unmarked grave.

But my mama always said
revenge is one powerful
emotion. My spirit hangs around here
just because it suits me, watching progress
come and fade. And my essence
settles over this hard county
like a blanket of despair. It lingers
in the air and drives each new generation
of their children to seek out other places.
Soft white faces live here, desperate people
hanging onto remnants of this county's
early promise, hoping for resurgence of their formal
glory. I've watched their booms and busts,
the way they block all other skins but white
from entering this hallowed bastion
with WHITES ONLY plastered on each
street sign, invisible but there.
One of my favorite pastors said,
"There is a dome of hopeless doom
that covers this whole area." Amen, Brother!
That hopeless dome of doom
is me, my legacy for men with hearts
far blacker than my skin.

Moira B

"Moira, I agree that Christina's and Sharon's poems are distinguised works, 
but anyone who can your write these lines-- 
black limbs on the river, eddying
on muddy currents, thrashing for a foothold 
in the water as my own legs thrashed 
in that thin air. Goddamn their souls!--
can appear in such company without apology." Jan

 With the U.S. Senate about to apologize for not stopping lynching
about a hundred years too late, Moira B's poem is quite timely 
and I must agree with Jan's comments about those wonderful/awe-ful lines. 
We're all in good company here!
Christina