They tied it to the land like a dog,
the idea: compromise—which
the land alone is incapable of exacting
absent, on the one white hand, the North,
on the other white hand, the South;
incapable, absent the parchment
declarations and debate, all of which,
alongside the hoe the shovel the plow
the whip, broke the land open like skin.
A latitude welled with blood.
To tell right it, refuse the theory
offered: the promise of property futures
masquerading as balance, the premise
of nearly, but not quite, a person. Refuse.
Hear instead Maria Stewart: And such is the powerful
force of prejudice. Let our girls possess
what amiable qualities of soul they may…
it is impossible for scarce an individual of them
to rise above the condition of servants.
Hear Bethany Veney: I have imagined myself
with a young girl’s ambition, working hard…
getting a little home with a garden…bringing
my sisters and brothers to share with me
these blessings of freedom.
Hear Mattie J. Jackson: The days of sadness
for mistress were days of joy for us.
We shouted and laughed
to the top of our voices.
Hear Lucy Anne Delaney: “You have no business
to whip me. I don’t belong to you”…
I rebelled against such government.
Say the compromise is between a woman
who feels pain and another woman who feels
pain. Say both women are torn after giving birth
and from both arise a smell like rot, a pain
from being rotted inside. Say fistula.
Say only one woman is whole. Say the other
is ⅗ths. Which one do you sew with silver,
with pig gut, with lead? Whoever says, sews.
Whoever’s sewn gets no laudanum. Say cure.
Call it technique. Call it science. Whoever
calls it, keeps it, no matter Anarcha,
who took, after thirty procedures, the needle
and silk. A new compromise: take down
the statue, hooded and noosed, put into storage.
Concede: still only one woman is whole.
Concede in favor of balance.
Let the state petition for statehood.
Let the state say who is free.
Let the state enslave.
Let the state set the terms
for enslavement: three years.
The Lash Law.
Let the state set the clock for exile
once the term is complete.
Let the state call it grace:
three years for women,
two years for men.
Let the state refuse to ratify
the amendments: 14th and 15th.
Let the state Jim Crow before Jim Crow:
whites-only on every border.
Let the state keep its balance
in 1959 and ’73,
on campus in 1988,
or on the light rail in 2017:
a bat in its hand, a knife
in its hand, blood on its hand.
They set the terms, rigged
the clock, the ship, colonized
the land. They would see us
free but gone.
Compromise.
But we convened,
decided the land that held
our blood, our kin—
decided we would stay,
show that one way
could be another.
Track the fissure of the first compromise,
then the second, then another running
fugitive through the foundation.
Follow it one century
to my great-grandmother’s birth.
A century more: just past her death.
It wasn’t that long ago
I was sitting on her porch swing,
hoping for a breeze.
It wasn’t that long ago
we were in the twenty-fourth state,
our bodies undoing the roads.
It wasn’t that long ago,
the latitude migrated, anchored
to the southern border: history looped.
This isn’t America.
It’s nothing else.