The Hickory of Oak and Down Crucified Man

Part one

Brokered from a well of broken spirits, noosed, a rope of blood from the neck before. Wearing church slacks, coat and tie throat slit from the bushes jumped onto the wagon seat. Throat slashed from ear to mole, shrieks of horror and bodies lying in state. Contribute to the drying well before you start home. Won’t be coming back to services tonight. Scalp feathers on the axe hanging on the wall, and a slow fire burning and water on the road. The next day a holiday and horses in the pasture, the smell of gun powder riffing up through the over night pass in the hills.
Later chain gang baking in the hot sun, perspiration beading up like a widow’s cheeks on Christmas morning. Gray faces in a Mississippi graveyard hoeing Alabama dust. The sermon won’t have a wishbone or a plate of beans. Glory is in the stones you pull up along the way. Young boy walks his fingers across the 88’s, the rugged cross-burned down into the coals of hell. Nails holding together the axe head to pine and a copperhead on Waterloo shores where Indians once boarded a ship. Brown skin weighting in the water that turns over itself.
A young lady from Texarkana rubs her dress against the fence. The warden’s niece on her way to church watches the water cup passed from bucket to chin. Years before the depression stretched to the shores of Africa and the coastal lands of Germany. Before the war struck an industry of disposable labor. Before the chain gang became the factory window. The young lady eased her skirt from her bare foot to the snap of the hosiery safety pin device, a sight surely to make Uncle Remus pour out his whiskey to shuck oysters from the side of the road.


- Chris Mansel