Mrs. A. T. Goodwin’s Letter to the Provost Marshal, 1866

By Kiki Petrosino

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.

White Blood: A Lyric of Virginia

Every 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.

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