White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia
Playlist by Kiki PetrosinoEvery story has a beginning, and mine starts in Virginia. My book, White Blood, is a work of documentary poetry, taking as the starting point my own genealogical roots in the Commonwealth. My ancestors belong(ed) to the Black communities of central and northern Virginia. They survived centuries of enslavement and went on to raise their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren in freedom. Because many of my Black Virginian ancestors were denied literacy, they left behind few written records of their lives prior to the twentieth century. I began writing these poems by conducting archival research, in person and online, to gain some sense of who they were. I visited libraries, museums, and historical societies. I also traveled to specific sites in Virginia where my ancestors may have lived. Far from "solving" the mysteries of my ancestors' origins, my search often led me to ask new questions about the past, and about how we tell stories. These poems come from a section of the book called "Louisa," after the county in central Virginia. Harriett and Butler Smith, mother and son, are two ancestors of mine who resided there. They, and the collective ancestral voice I call the “Free Smiths,” are inspired as much by the documentary silences in their histories as by the existing records of their lives. The poem “Mrs. A. T. Goodwin’s Letter to the Provost Marshal, 1866” takes its title and reformulates individual phrases from a handwritten letter filed at the Virginia Freedmen’s Bureau Field Office in Louisa. The Bureau was established in 1865 to aid newly freed Black Americans in the aftermath of the Civil War.
The Origins of Butler Smith
B is for bright. A boy. No birthmarks but his hair(inclined to straightness) & his nose (more like a white man’s).B, also, for the bluets you dreamed crowding the drive leading upto the old farm you’ve crossed two states to see. What’ll you do ifyou find no parcel in the name of B? At the courthouse, in the relic roomat the indicated plat? So sorry you don’t already know the yard where chickenspecked & patted under the eye of Granddaddy B. So sorry you missed himon his way. He must be burning high above your head, a comet, or worse.The story of a comet somebody told you. Wrong comet, wrong county.Wrong dates spiraled into the roll book. A roll of microfilm for every year you can’tconfirm. How to confirm a certain smokehouse not marked on any grid?Lucky B, spangled B— this is not where you begin.
Message from the Free Smiths of Louisa County
You ask why we didn’t register as requiredwhy we failed to appear before the Provost Marshalwhy we avoided the courthouse, the census, the bank.You ask where we sheltered while battles seethedwhere our mothers gave birth, in which hidden houses& why we didn’t register as required.While so many perished in other countiesor raged with Nat in Southampton, how did we manage?We avoided the courthouse, the census, the bank.Whatever we had, we held. Whatever we knewwe told no one who counted. We kept backour names. We didn’t register as required.When you search for us now, you find silence.You may trace us back to a moment. No further.We avoided the courthouse, the census, the bankwith its clock, tracking everyone’s time but our own.We chose inward passages. We kept deep counsel.We didn’t register as required, which disappoints you.Why do you trust the courthouse, the census, the bank?
The Origins of Harriett Smith
Old Master writes her name in his ledgers or might. It depends on what Old Master seeswhat subtleties he tracks, which gifts. Suki walked to Jerdone, he writes, but you need to readHarriett walked. You need her to come up from the quarter & step through the narrowbell of Old Master’s attention, a light girl with ears bored for rings. But Harriett is prudent.She never wastes her scant yard of brown ticklenburg or breaks her tools in the field.For a whole page in his daybook, instead of writing about Harriett, Old Master countshis glass decanters from France. He orders every hand to finish harvest without saying whose.You search for Harriett until the yellow globes of Old Master’s script go dim, gummedlike the fallen seed pods about his house. Well, well. It’s a good thing you’re a finch now.You were born to gorge.
Mrs. A. T. Goodwin’s Letter to the Provost Marshal, 1866
You ask why I raised my hand to that boy, whyI gave him some raps over the head, you askwhy I took my small riding whip to his shouldershis head, why, you ask, when he would not cut logsat the wood pile. You ask why I took him by the hand &gave him some raps, when not one stick did he cut from twelveto four. I told his mother, my milker washer, I told herin plain words he must do better. I told her all this withoutany improvement. She was insolent, which is why my sonstruck her. He only struck her when she ran from her cabinto pluck up the boy while I was giving him some rapsover the head & shoulders with just my small ridingwhip. Understand, Sir, this boy had not cut more thantwo scant handfuls of wood for my cookstove, but allthe family were engaged to me: his mother, the boyto bring my horses to water, to cut wood, only yesterdayhe said I shall not cut a stick of wood. I shall not touch it. So theseare the negroes we’ve raised, never abused a single one, alwayshad the kindest feelings, the kindest, so long as their conductwere tolerable, so long as I did not have to standby my wood pile, smelling the wood pile, the smell of the sapintolerable from twelve to four, the heave & snap of the clearsap inside the logs, never holding still, so that I had rather standin the house, my hands sifting flour across a board, so thatin truth I had much rather be still, holding nothing butmy riding whip, dark & folded up small.