Cherokee Removal, 1838 (iii)

u-ne-ga, the color of chickweed wilting in the corner of the stockade where he spreads pallets for
 
his children
 
and the box of sand he wrote in at the mission school / words he made and unmade with the
 
sweep of his hand
 
of fat meat and water gruel that his wife prepares
 
and dozing in the corner / his children waiting for what they do not know
 
of peace they make or some mimicry
 
the peeled elderberry twig his daughter holds after the rain drenches, fevers
 
and her name written in wet earth that loosens to a flow of mud
 
 
 

William Woolfitt is the author of two books of poetry, Beauty Strip (Texas Review Press, 2014) and Charles of the Desert (Paraclete Press, forthcoming). He has received a Howard Nemerov Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His poems and stories have appeared in Shenandoah, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Threepenny Review, Appalachian Heritage, Tin House online, Notre Dame Review, New Ohio Review, The Cincinnati Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere.