Poem of the Week: Adam Wiedewitsch

        

Here Were Buried     

On the anniversary of the largest mass hanging is US history in Mankato, Minnesota

in blue earth, among willows, aisles

of box-elder, elms, in the silence between

on the sand-bar in front

of town, south of the bend in the river

south of the prison camp

on the floor two-by-two in chains

a short horse-cart or army-wagon ride

west of the town square

the strict formation

of soldiers, cavalry, civilian mobs

around the scaffold, twenty-four feet square

twenty high, a gallows

for the procession in bonds, white-hoods

noose

a slow drum, the signal-beat for the knife

the day after Christmas

a week before emancipation

thirty-eight Dakota in unison death song

thirty-eight in two rows

feet together, their crowns

-Adam Wiedewitsch

Used by permission.

Adam Wiedewitsch is editor at Tongue: A Journal of Writing & Art, and co-founded the international organization, Pirogue Collective. He co-edited the anthology Imagine Africa and The Rule of Barbarism, poems by Abdellatif Laabi, both available from Island Position; and has been the recipient of fellowships from the Gorée Institute (Senegal), the Eva Tas Foundation (Holland), DAAD (Berlin), Millay Colony (New York) and Ledig House International Writers Residency (New York). His poetry has been published in Carapace (South Africa), New Contrast (South Africa), and Azul Press (Holland).

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