Yazoo River

In the Morning Disguised in my mouth as a swamp land, nailed to my teeth like a rising sun, you come out in the middle of fish scales, you bleed into gorge wrapped with red ants.

You syncopate the air with lungs like screams from Yazoo, like x-rated tongues and nickel-plated fingers of a raw ghost man.

You touch brown nipples to knives and somewhere stripped like a whirlwind, stripped for the shrine room, you sing to me through the side face of a black rooster.

in the morning in the morning in the morning all over my door like a rooster in the morning in the morning in the morning and suddenly in my kidneys like perforated hiccups inflamed in my ribs like three hoops of thunder through a screw a star-bent bolt of quivering colons you breathe into veiled rays and scented ice holes you fire the space like the flare of embalmed pigeons and palpitate with the worms and venom and wailing flanks and somewhere inside this fever inside my patinaed pubic and camouflaged slit stooped forward on fangs in rear of your face you shake me in the full crown of a black rooster in the morning in the morning in the morning masquerading in my horn like a river eclipse to these infantries of dentures of diving spears you enter broken mirrors through fragmented pipe spit you pull into a shadow ring of magic jelly you wear the sacrificial blood of nightfall you lift the ceiling with my tropical slush dance you slide and tremble with the reputation of an earthquake and when i kick through walls to shine like silver when i shine like brass through a crust in a compound when i shine shine shine you wail to me in the drum call of a black rooster in the morning in the morning in the morning gonna kill me a rooster in the morning early in the morning way down in the morning before the sun passes by in the morning in the morning in the morning in the morning when the deep sea goes through a dog's bite and you spit on tip of your long knife in the morning in the morning when peroxide falls on a bed of broken glass and the sun rises like a polyester ball of menses in the morning gonna fire dance in the petro in the morning turn loose the blues in the funky jungle in the morning i said when you see the morning coming like a two-headed twister let it blow let it blow in the morning in the morning all swollen up like an ocean in the morning early in the morning before the cream dries in the bushes in the morning when you hear the rooster cry cry rooster cry in the morning in the morning in my evilness of this morning i said disgusted in my mouth as a swamp land Nailed to my teeth like a rising sun You come out in the middle of fish scales You bleed into gorge wrapped with red ants You syncopate the air with lungs like screams from Yazoo Like X-rated tongues and nickel-plated fingers of raw ghost man You touch brown nipples into knives and somewhere stripped Like a whirlwind stripped for the shrine room You sing to me through the side face of a black rooster In the morning, in the morning, in the morning

The boys were purchased by a slave trader and sent off to the lower country, but the mother was more fortunate and became the slave of Isaac Mansfield, a gentleman residing in the city of St. Louis.

The last tidings that William had of his brothers was that they had been bought by a planter and sent to his farm on the Yazoo River.

If still living, they are lingering out a miserable existence on a cotton, sugar, or rice plantation in a part of the country where the life of the slave has no parallel in deeds of atrocity.

Nothing can be worse than slavery in Louisiana and Mississippi on the banks of the noblest river in the world.

With the loss of Holly Springs and the destruction of our base of supplies, there was nothing for that whole army of Grant's to do but to trudge its weary way back to Corinth and Memphis through the mud and the wind and the rain.

The tragical part of that campaign was taking place at the same moment down by the Yazoo River, right under the guns of Vicksburg.

Grant, when he marched out of Memphis, had sent Sherman and 30,000 men down the river in steamboats to attack Vicksburg from one side, while he should hurry along with another 30,000 men and pound it from the other side.

Sherman and his heroes made the awful assaults at Chickasaw Bayou we read of, never dreaming of the fiasco that had befallen the main army at Holly Springs.

He had been made a general now and would soon leave for his new command.

This sash was one that he had worn and honored on many a battlefield.

Is it any wonder that now, after the long and perilous years, it is preserved by me as a souvenir of honor? Soon after, I went to a sutler store on the Yazoo River to buy a sword and uniform.

In those days, swords were not given to officers by committees in dress coats until they had been earned.