In Which the Klan Ignites a Cross atop Stone Mountain and is Reborn, November 1915
The first thing that comes to mind
is the color of the light caught in the coarse dimples
of the stone, and the way the wind must have moaned
and licked the flames, shadow roaming rock
with treetops below overhanging Confederate graves
all the way to Atlanta, and in my mind it is not beautiful,
and the cross is burning beneath a nation of stars.
The timing was right, though, and the city
was a window into Jim Crow’s open heart
as Birth of a Nation hit theatres, lost cause
sweeping the streets like a salve for the city’s scars,
and the mark was oblivion, dazed taste of exile,
as Helen Plane rallied the Daughters of the Confederacy
to make a martyr of the mountain, and when that night
in November the new members donned their robes
atop the granite dome, the cinematic fantasy broke free
of the screen beside a deadly altar: open bible,
unsheathed sword, canteen of water. When I named
the mountain as a child, I savored the shape of the vowels.
On the peak, I played with a toy switchblade comb,
raised a canteen to my mouth and drank slowly.
I felt blessed above the Confederate bust
bigger than Rushmore, sun at my back and blood
running hot, eight years old, caught in the dogmatic scene,
and I’m terrified of why the first thing that comes to mind
is the color of the light, which could be mistaken
as beautiful, and why when I think of the robes I think
of my bedsheets pinned to the ceiling around my bed,
backlit with a flashlight, my dad watching Law & Order
down the hall, and I think of the days now, at thirty,
when I wake up and feel like a guest in my body,
spend half an hour measuring breath, trying to shake myself
back into the real. But it’s all real. There’s no dodging that.
In the mornings I replace the saucer of water
on the kitchen tile for the cat, and I refresh the news
on my phone like a slot machine for hours,
eyes numb until half the anesthetic day has passed.
The record lacks what happened after the new members
extinguished the fire and descended the western slope,
and it lacks the death that might have stained their robes
that night, and it lacks the families below, extinguishing
their lamps, holding each other and holding their breath.
Jacob Griffin Hall was raised outside of Atlanta, Ga and lives in Columbia, Mo, where he is a PhD candidate and works as poetry editor of The Missouri Review. His first collection of poems, Burial Machine, was selected as the winner of the 2021 Backlash Best Book Award and is forthcoming with Backlash Press. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in 32 Poems, New South, DIAGRAM, New Orleans Review, New Ohio Review Online, Ghost City Review, and elsewhere.