Charlotte

January 12, 1928
a tornado
lit down on Alabama.
Swaddled in a blanket
and held tight,
she could not
be stilled.
Her mother had
no idea
the range of emotion
she held
in her arms.

Charlotte blew in
at a wind velocity
that could’a blown a tunnel
clean through the mountain
that rested above Huntsville.
Monte Sano would see her passage
many times over.

She was a child
intended for love,
but there was a
cold torrent waiting to pass
that got frozen in place.

The mother
was not one
for cozying up
to this child.
Charlotte’s face shown lovely
in too many frames.
A mother’s love
turned to envy.

Her hometown had one Main Street
and one main photographer
whose focus was beauty.
Charlotte sat pretty for him
and her smile
beguiled the population
of that little town.

Her family mistook
the invitations to homes
of church families
as the favoring of this girl
over her sisters
when really it was
the lecherous men
who preyed over children
and counted on her
coming to play
with their daughters.
What a fitting ploy.
They would stroke her hair,
handily forcing their affections.

Charlotte grew tired
of the attention.
She began to twist
and unfurl,
looking for a place
to let her wings glide.

Her mother’s eyes
fell upon
wing cutters
and she snipped away
at anything
that wouldn’t lay still.
Before her mother
would finish
there would be pock marks
all over dear Charlotte
whose only dream
was to sing
like the ladies
she heard on her radio
late at night.
The green eyed mother stood
outside Charlotte’s door
waiting for the sound
and the moment she could
call out
and shut it down.
Charotte’s voice would not be heard;
her song and the grief
she carried to her grave.
There was no one to listen.

Before her eyes would close
she would say to her daughter,
“I only wanted
to sing my song.
Nothing more.”

Original Document

“Original” was stamped
on the document
giving my grandfather
permission to work in the mill.

On this 5th day of June, 1912
Toy Hudson,
of his own volition,
desires to be employed
by the Dallas Manufacturing Company
at fifteen years old.
His father signs the papers
wherein my grandfather
becomes the property
of King Cotton.

Fibers float in the sweltering,
crowded warehouse air
where machines clatter, whir, and stir
their deafening noise.
The man-child takes hold of the shuttle
working the clouds
picked by colored hands.
Those bitten and calloused by seeds
bring the swollen
and filthy matted mess
to be cleaned up
so to appear proper
in public places.

My grandfather waits for the long,
full throated factory whistle
to signal the day’s end.
He walks with other workers,
his empty paper lunch bag
swinging loosely in his hand,
toward the village.
He will sleep awhile and return.

He passes the colored men
unloading bales
that will be worked tomorrow;
his future guaranteed.

Edwin Ray Dockery

In 1959
Edwin Ray Dockery died
a most unnatural death.

My grandmother led us
to our neighbors’ door
for the viewing.
His casket stood open
where his young face,
under a sheet of glass,
could’ve turned up and smiled
were it not for the heart
that beat no more.

His belly had its own story.
The Daily Courier reported
his last meal:
A dozen oysters,
a dozen shrimp,
two veal cutlets,
salad,
six buttered rolls,
half a banana pie,
and banana ice cream.
He then smoked an expensive cigar.

No Ricky Ray Rector, this guy.

Peer into the future:
1992. Ricky Ray Rector.
Billy Clinton’s radar
is all over Ricky Ray.
To get elected
he can’t be a softie
so the man whose frontal lobe
was sheered away years ago,
must die of legal, lethal poison
on a gurney.
The officers come to take him
for his last walk
but there’s a question
begging his consumption of pecan pie.
“I’ll eat it when I get back,” he says.

Edwin Ray sizzled
at his appointment with death.
Ricky Ray complied.

No one asked Edwin Ray
how it felt to choke the life out of a person
or why he reacted so strongly
to the advances of another man.
His retort to justice levelled,
“I am not guilty of first degree murder.”
His grave is marked simply
with no hint as to his cause of death.

Yellow Mama,
that most uncomfortable seat
in Alabama’s death chamber,
took him
into her arms and
with a tug to her throttle
sent a shock wracking him to his core.

Standing before the pine box,
my cousin is the one who figures it out.
She grabs my hand
and pulls me, running out the door.
“We have to get out of here!”
“Why?” I ask.
“Why is there a sheet of glass
over his body?
What is that smell?”

My cousin squeezes my hand
as we run back to
our grandparent’s house.
She tugs frantically,
“They electrocuted him!
They electrocuted him!”

The village is quiet that evening.
The usual gathering of mill workers
on my grandparents’ porch
doesn’t materialize.
There’s a slant toward the house
with its casket tucked
inside the front door.

All night I bury my nose
into my pillow.
That smell.
The odor of burnt flesh,
settled in my nostrils,
makes its way into my dreams.

God, Mother of Mercy,
hold Edwin Ray in your arms forever.
God, Giver of Solace,
find his mother’s tears
and make a river.
God, Holder of Hearts,
shore up a father’s dreams for his son.

The act of a rogue state
is kindled by a forbidding spark,
unable to see the face
I spy with my childlike eye,
sleeping under glass.

We all collapse
under the weight of that box.