Southern Gothic: A Romance after Sally Mann: Blackwater 2

Stunted, wasted trees at
conflagration’s end along

the ink blasted creek
only dead things float in.

What remains of a bled-
out sickle moon is being

swallowed by gasoline fire
clouds. It’s always midnight

where the blackwater runs.
 
Southern Gothic: A Romance after Sally Mann: Blackwater 4

The hard work of dying 
has already taken place here

in this used-to-be-landscape
artist’s sought refuge in

during night terrors where
the paint they used to create

images became the blood
of slaves pressed upon 

spoiled canvas.

 
Southern Gothic: A Romance after Sally Mann: Blackwater 18

Sideways rain raises
blisters on all that

it touches. Still black
water is inert as a dream

image terror is trying
to escape from.  Here,

even the tree’s shadows 
have shadows that radiate

a constant pain.


 
Southern Gothic: A Romance after Sally Mann:
	Blackwater with Lightning

Maybe the end times
had begun and only

the woman with a camera
noticed how the black

sky was split wide open
by crooked, spoiled veins,

electricity bolts;
heat licks the dry fallow

earth instead of rain.
 
Southern Gothic: A Romance after Sally Mann:
	Swamp Bones

If the juncture where dream
becomes nightmare could be

captured as an image in
a photograph it would look

like this: massive ground root
structures like broken bones

emerging from a gripping fog
then frozen, severed from their

subordinate trunks in a fetal, 
pain of light.
 
Southern Gothic: A Romance After Sally Mann:
	Antietam (Starry Night)

An explosion of fireflies
is superimposed on paint-it-

black-night as present as a landscape 
Vincent would have painted if he arose

from the dead in this place, haunted
by the 30,000 lost souls who fought 

here and accomplished nothing.