“Made of Duretta cloth and sateen, embroidered in silk.
Cotton cord and tassels. Price, each $6.00″
—from Catalogue of Official Robes and Banners, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
Look up here, the air is Aryan. The moon,
our white hood. Our life must loom large
above that which is darkened in our shadow.
A fate loomed long ago, ours
in the weft and warp of hems,
a lowered white curtain on this
re-coonstructed show called Pursuit
of their Happiness. The fall of our robe’s drape
is their downfall, so we must be the season, winter
them with our long reach. This long white
train, an invisible locomotive to an indivisible
empire—underground, a railroad housed
in the myth of Equality. Let’s go down to the river
and post above the water’s edge;
loot the coins from their bodies, set them loose
down that river; its big mouth gurgling underfoot.
Tommye Blount is the author of the chapbook What Are We Not For and the debut full-length collection Fantasia for the Man in Blue. Born and raised in Detroit, Tommye now lives in Novi, Michigan.
