1520: Louis Congo in Love | M'Bilia Meekers
"Louis Congo in Love"
M'Bilia Meekers
I.
For you, my fleur, I toil
on the route of these slaves' escape:
15 pounds a head, planted on pikes
along the levee's edge.
You walk past them every day,
but when the skin over their severed necks
curls up like old paper and their lips,
cracked from sun, begin to slacken,
you turn away from the worms,
reaching through their teeth,
and I wish the slaves
had chosen another route to follow,
one through the swampland,
one you'd never find.
II.
Through the window, I watch
you sidestep the rotting magnolias
that mark the path to our home.
I remember then how once you turned
my hands over and over
as through you'd lost something there.
But you never mentioned
the red crust I couldn't clean
from beneath my nails some nights.
You'd just turn my hands over again
and watch them drop to my sides.
As M'Bilia explained in the introduction to her chapbook, "Louis Congo was a slave owned by the Company of the Indies. In 1725, he was freed to become New Orleans' first executioner. By taking this post, he was able to negotiate to have his wife live with him in his own house."
everything/I have ever learned//in my lifetime/leads back to this: the fires/and the black/river of loss/whose other side//is salvation
M'Bilia Meekers
I.
For you, my fleur, I toil
on the route of these slaves' escape:
15 pounds a head, planted on pikes
along the levee's edge.
You walk past them every day,
but when the skin over their severed necks
curls up like old paper and their lips,
cracked from sun, begin to slacken,
you turn away from the worms,
reaching through their teeth,
and I wish the slaves
had chosen another route to follow,
one through the swampland,
one you'd never find.
II.
Through the window, I watch
you sidestep the rotting magnolias
that mark the path to our home.
I remember then how once you turned
my hands over and over
as through you'd lost something there.
But you never mentioned
the red crust I couldn't clean
from beneath my nails some nights.
You'd just turn my hands over again
and watch them drop to my sides.
As M'Bilia explained in the introduction to her chapbook, "Louis Congo was a slave owned by the Company of the Indies. In 1725, he was freed to become New Orleans' first executioner. By taking this post, he was able to negotiate to have his wife live with him in his own house."
everything/I have ever learned//in my lifetime/leads back to this: the fires/and the black/river of loss/whose other side//is salvation