{"id":8415,"date":"2014-08-01T13:05:48","date_gmt":"2014-08-01T19:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"\/nashvillereview\/?p=8415"},"modified":"2015-02-14T14:43:29","modified_gmt":"2015-02-14T20:43:29","slug":"letter-to-the-south-daniel-devaughn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/archives\/8415","title":{"rendered":"Letter to the South"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"margin-left:60px\">I was a boy palming the furrows <\/span><br \/>\nof your face, spread out beneath a static overcast.<br \/>\nYour hot breath bloomed for miles, like cotton,<br \/>\nand if we spoke in tongues, you never noticed,<br \/>\ncontent in the grip of history, washed clean<br \/>\nin blood and the silk of darkened whisperings.<br \/>\nYou caught me in the corners of pupils, bound<br \/>\nin the faces of grandma&#8217;s goats. They would test<br \/>\ntheir fresh horns on the old Toyota&#8217;s radiator grill<br \/>\nwhile grandpa smoked so deep the sun seemed<br \/>\nto flame out to ember. Cicadas sang up the lean<br \/>\npine trees and the stars eyed your earth,<br \/>\nfor they were younger. In summertime, the backyard<br \/>\nwould flood, and we would walk in the water<br \/>\namazing our sisters huddled for fear of acts<br \/>\nof God or some less-than-holy specter floating<br \/>\nacross to greet them. Cops stopped only<br \/>\nfor the blacks living de facto in the Forties.<br \/>\nYou wonder how you got this bad rap,<br \/>\nsometimes so cold, like wind through a ribcage,<br \/>\nlike the spirit come to fill us nights my mother&#8217;s<br \/>\nfather taught us from the prophets. He believed<br \/>\nbeneath the mantle of the raised hand, plastic<br \/>\nsacrament of grape juice cups. His blood is in me too,<br \/>\nbut what of mine is you? I imagine your frosts free<br \/>\nof the flame of church marquees, Saturday meetings<br \/>\nof the congregation men, where we&#8217;d eat grease-<br \/>\nchoked breakfasts and break into country hymns.<br \/>\nI slept through it all and revenant-wise crossed<br \/>\nthe parking lot under my father. It is like I look<br \/>\nthrough walls of water now. Shrouded in wool,<br \/>\npatrolling our rivers, picking fish-bones<br \/>\nfrom the clay-banks, you sprinkle them back<br \/>\nto the acetate black of night. We clothed you,<br \/>\nbut you howled in your wildness\u2014a steaming,<br \/>\nhairless kid, scanning brambles or stars for your kin.<br \/>\nWhen the freezing rains cease, again, I will<br \/>\nhave forgotten the shape of your face. Let us<br \/>\nmeet beyond the curve of the dry river-road,<br \/>\nwhere the oak spread over beds of burnt bermuda.<\/p>\n<h6><a href=\"\/nashvillereview\/archives\/8216\">Daniel DeVaughn<\/a><\/h6>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was a boy palming the furrows of your face, spread out beneath a static overcast. Your hot breath bloomed for miles, like cotton, and if we spoke in tongues, you never noticed, content in the grip of history, washed clean in blood and the silk of darkened whisperings. You caught me in the corners [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[17],"tags":[25],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Jypy-2bJ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8415"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8415"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10182,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8415\/revisions\/10182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp0.vanderbilt.edu\/nashvillereview\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}