the naked carrion of our bodies

a free verse poem for Climacteric: On the Turning Point

on September 7, 1864

my 4th great grandfather,
Reddick, wrote a letter
to his son, Hiram,
with a remedy

— 40 drops of turpentine
& the white of one egg
shaken in “a big mouth vile” —

to be taken by teaspoon
every 3 hours
day and night

something had taken ahold
of his son’s body and there’s
a fragility that shows through
in his letter

he wrote it one month
before he, himself, would die
of typhoid fever,
just a day after his wife died of the same

he was already ill when he wrote it

“If I doant git no woars I will Com an see you in a few days.
Seand me woard back by Jack wheather you ar better ar not.”

i don’t know what was ailing Hiram,
or if it was this recipe that saved him,
but he recovered
and lived 45 more years

the letter had been carried
by Jack, a young boy that
Reddick would bequeath
to Hiram from his death bed,
come October,
neither of them really recognizing
how much Jack’s life (amongst others)
had propped up their own

they were just living & dying,
just trying to do what they
deemed good men would do,
just rotting from the inside out
inside the last days of the confederacy

reminds me of a peach i once saw,
filled with autumn rain,
its’ skin a vessel
for the flesh as it decayed
and washed away

and here i am,
born of their blood,
amongst the carrion remains
of that legacy still alive today
trying to learn how to
give back some of what has been taken

the old forms hold onto what’s rotting
and i hope to see the skin give way before

i face my own death
some day

naked

This piece is one in a series, Climacteric: On the Turning Point, a poetic collaboration for National Poetry Writing Month (#NaPoWriMo) by Samantha Wallen and Michelle Puckett. To read the previous poem in the series, click here. To read the next poem in the series, click here.

Michelle Puckett, MFA is a poet, doula, permaculturalist, coach and Co-Founder of Creating Freedom Movements, a social justice school for activists. All of her work aims to nourish the sacred and make it plain in every day life.