Confederate Monument
By Luke A. Powers
High above
Courthouse square
Atop an impossibly
Tall pillar
He has stood
Sentinel now
A hundred years
Summers, winters,
Facing a South
Always farther away
Waiting for word
Signal, reinforcement
Until he’s gone
Blind in alabaster
In cap and gloves
His buttons smooth
Leaning on a rifle
That like his face
Is losing definition
The vestige of history
He wants to come down
He can’t remember
The high deeds
The sacred cause
The ideas that make
Blood turn to stone
The sky is swept
Clean of martyrs
Clouds fray in bliss
In sweet nothingness
He wants to come down
Laid in cool earth
Like a dark seed that
Will never grow anything
But a deep forgetfulness
Past echoes of rumor
Where none of this
Ever happened
None of this, not
A single minie ball,
Ever was—
But still he stands
At his post
Sun and moon
Unmourned, undead
Waiting only for
This past to be done.
Luke A. Powers teaches English at Tennessee State University, an historically black university in Nashville. He is a singer-songwriter who has worked with Garth Hudson (of The Band) and Sneaky Pete Kleinow (of The Flying Burrito Brothers). He’s also a member of The Spicewood Seven, who have released two protest albums: Kakistocracy (2006) and Still Mad (2016), both of which are musical acts of resistance of the dumbed-down, low-information culture that elected George W. Bush and Donald Trump.
Image credit: Yelp.