#194: Three Poems by Kerri French

~This poem was previously published in The Southeast Review (2010).

 

Shelton Laurel

In January 1863, 13 accused Union sympathizers were executed by a Confederate regiment in the Shelton Laurel Valley of Madison County, North Carolina.  Having followed the Confederate soldiers to learn the fate of the men and boys who were taken, the women of the valley were caught and stripped of their clothing, tied and beaten, and hung by their necks until they were nearly dead.   

The birds spoke slower, then,

the eyes of each bound girl unstoppable.  

What became of us was a field,

roads submerged under a tale

of blue, the trees calling each starry

point a lion or a liar, a man pouring

water over heads.  Across miles,

we counted leaves gripped low

beneath the storm, orange clouds

shaking the pulse of our throats.  

When the last girl lost her center,

the music churning through the fall,

we retraced her steps until the hours

bled into snow, each backward glance

a moan unrecognized, the weather

a ceiling displaying the scene

of what happened, girl after girl

of seasons circling beyond return.  

*****

~This poem was previously published in Barrow Street (2010).

 Elegy for the House

Ask me which night and I’ll tell you the static

always slipped from bedroom to field. 

In the dark, the wind stirred a neighbor’s voice

and I mistook dust for a circus in moonlight,

counted one hundred bright balloons falling to floor. 

Ask me again and I’ll tell you I ran through the crops 

as if the walls grew wings, slept across a sky

shipped through mountains.  The body burned

softer then, each light from inside flashing

the story of what happened.  Ask me and I’ll tell you

I returned at midnight to find what was lost,

the foundation buried beneath September,

every photograph hidden in grass. 

*****

~This poem was previously published in The Pinch (2011).

 The Bridge

In the last days of summer, practice ran late—

the field more dirt than grass, the drought’s red

markings covering our legs as we sprinted.

Snakes hung from trees near the goalpost

and no girl would dare retrieve loose balls

that flew past the net.  Even birds

avoided the trees, searching for food beyond

the stream where a rival team practiced.

Walking home, most nights we followed

the trail we imagined those birds had laid,

listening for the flutter of wings in the dark.

The night before school began, we lingered

in the shadows as a rare rain set in.

I was thirteen and almost in high school.

My back to the team, I paused on the bridge,

the water below long dried up.

I did not register a hand at first, turning

to the face of the town’s only deaf girl

pushing me from the edge.

In my head, I fell over and over, arm

turning mid-air and twisting to its break

while the girl above watched my screams.

My body landed without sound, only the birds

to greet me.  No one spoke as they left.

I lay beneath the bridge, calling each one

by name, screaming for someone to stay.

I screamed until they could no longer hear me—

or wouldn’t, I wasn’t sure—my voice echoing

as the girl still stared, my throat unheard, but seen.

*****

THE STORY BEHIND THE POEMS

 These poems were written the year I moved to Cambridge, England. Most of the poems I wrote during that time were for my chapbook of persona poems about Amy Winehouse, but when I finally paused that project for a bit, I found myself returning to the landscape of my childhood in North Carolina. At a time when so much was moving forward in my life—I was in a new country, on the cusp of getting married while navigating visa applications and starting a new job—I nonetheless found that my writing continued to look back to where I came from. Though the poems are very different in style and content, they still feel linked to me, as all were written during a time when I was intensely longing for the landscape I knew as a child. The emotion in each represents a bit of the homesickness I felt that first year abroad, even though I was not yet ready to write directly about those feelings then.      

*****

ABOUT KERRI FRENCH

Kerri French’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, Mid-American Review, storySouth, DIAGRAM, Sou’wester, Waccamaw, Lumina, Best New Poets, and The Southern Poetry Anthology, among others. Instruments of Summer, her chapbook of poems about Amy Winehouse, is available from Dancing Girl Press. A North Carolina native, she lives and writes outside of Nashville, Tennessee. She can be found online at http://www.kerrifrench.com.