Dwellings

dwellings

andrew stone porter

the big house,
home to five generations of enslaving whites,
comes into view at the far end of the drive,
the lane flanked by stately rows of trees on either side;
and you, a poet, would likely have known the names of these trees
or, at the very least, you would have taken a moment to notice,
and later, would have found out 

at first it was a clapboard house,
a Christian men’s refuge from menacing Chickasaws and Shawnees and Iroquois
and then came the additions—brick colonial rooms, and one hundred and one enslaved,
and later still, in the Gilded age, the towering library
complete with two secret doors fronted with false books
leading down to the master’s study 

our guide—this is no “tour,” we are told, but rather “pilgrimage”—
notes that, really, we should not call them “masters”
for this word authorizes their false entitlement.
it is better to speak of the “enslavers” and the “enslaved,”
for this was a cascade of doings and sufferings that might have been otherwise.
and you, a poet, would likely agree that words matter
and that the acknowledgment of someone’s humanity
even in speech, even centuries later,
might be, in a small way, a gesture of resistance 

finally we approach the four slave cabins
which, I will soon learn, were lived in until seven years ago
but are now inhabited only by two rat snakes named Onyx and Ebony.
presently, archaeologists are peeling away the accretions
wall paper, plaster, a ceiling fan
and exposing the clay fired bricks and cellars hidden beneath
these bricks were made on site
the enslaved people who crafted them with their bare hands
also excavated the clay and lit the fires
and removed the bricks, one by one, to cool
and laid one row, and slathered mortar,
and, by and by, made their homes inside 

but now: our guide also instructs us not to call these slave quarters “homes”
because the enslaved did not choose to live there
and so, we are told, we should call them “dwellings” instead 

and here, I balk
and, I think you would have, too
for indeed words matter and, if these cabins
that enslaved people built with their own hands,
and in which they lay their heads at the end of each

back

breaking

day
were not their homes, then that means they had no homes—think it through—our white fathers snatched their lives
our white fathers sunk their stinking teeth into other people’s children
and we would do their memories honor
by rendering them homeless, too?
maybe we had better just sit quiet in the dust instead 

no, of course these four dwellings were homes
and I am grateful to have learned from you, my friend,
that with our words, together we fashion our lives into something more
than unmarked graves