Improv 1, Week 7

“The Mechanics of Failure” –Sandra Meek
beneath those noosed trees now
too easy to read in curling photographs
as caution, as remember’s thread
wearing each swelling trunk to that familiar
arc of pain.
--
The Klan, I told him, began with white men
protecting their families—from wifebeaters,
from Jews and immigrants, from blacks. They
invited my father, a Stone Mountain invitation
to retrograde. It must have felt like a social
noose, the Dragon’s breath bulging on his neck,
sweat swelling to the decency of good ole boys,
as my father curled in dissent. Was is the
bureaucracy of the Klan that drove him away,
the men’s wistfulness burning bright as a 50’s fire?
Or was it that, while pining for the slaves our ancestors
couldn’t afford, he realized he didn’t care for
robes or Christian values, or for protecting families?