Negatives
Townspeople gathered for the burning of John Lee. August 13, 1911 , Durant , Oklahoma . Gelatin silver print. Real photo postcard. 5½ x 3½”
You cannot see the body
each eye fixes, the focus
of the plume that angles every head,
John Lee, curling skyward
from the fire,
a town’s worth of bullets
searing white in the char
that was a man, gunned down
and set ablaze. John Lee
will burn till sundown,
till ash and a few charred parcels,
till the crowd disbands and spreads
to the corners of the town
now shut of every black,
and poor Miss Campbell’s poor white soul
drifts, avenged, to heaven
till the photographer bends to his film
to darken the postcard caption,
block letters that will blaze white
COON COOKING — the barbecue
one will later describe
on the opposite side. But for now
you can see only smoke
and the appetite on the faces
closest to the heat,
the desperate arching of a body
eager for a glimpse of the gravity,
the magnetism of this powerless man.
But let us imagine
just afterward, the camera slung
on the taker’s shoulder,
and at its heart a thousand blacks
staring into this cloud of light,
for a moment neither
gathering toward nor
descending from heaven,
but waiting in their adoration
and blessing each with its glow —
a vision of these thousand whites
turned dark for an hour
and praying, terrified, to this pillar
for the rectifying light
and then imagine,
their prayer, the paper
slowly darkening in the light
until they are restored, white from dark,
but the cloud now a dark tornado
caught on the verge of breaking through,
ready to consume each watcher
until all there is is this plume,
the body enlarged,
its ash, a thousand postcards
of a world he dared not dream he dreamed,
signed with the names of all who watch,
ready to inscribe the scene
Wish you were here.
originally appeared in Quarterly West (2004)
