Jim Limber the Adopted Mulatto Son of Jefferson Davis Visits His Adoptive Parents After the War by Shane McCrae

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 8, 2016   Jim Limber the Adopted Mulatto Son of Jefferson Davis Visits His Adoptive Parents After the War   Shane McCrae

The man said I could see them if I wanted   He said     America would never be   A place where we could     live together not at   Least in my lifetime     but the damned don’t see   No     important differences     between the Ne-   gro and the White the damned     don’t see no bad   In folks if what bad they done they ain’t     free-   ly chose to do the damned don’t see     no good   In folks if what good they done they ain’t     hoped   To do and the man     he said part of momma   Varina part of daddy     Jeff alread-   y     was burning in Hell I ought to join them     He     said we     might see good     from seeing each other   Tortured we might     finally see each other            Copyright © 2016 Shane McCrae. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “One morning, as she drove her carriage home from running errands, Varina Davis saw a mixed-race child being beaten by a black woman, presumably his mother. She took the child, a seven year-old named Jim Limber, from the woman, and brought him home to live with herself and her husband, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America. Limber was, in turn, taken from the Davises a little over a year later, when the the Union Army captured them in Irwinville, Georgia, and he never saw them again.” —Shane McCrae   Shane McCrae is the author of The Animal Too Big to Kill (Persea Books, 2015). He teaches at Oberlin College and lives in Oberlin, Ohio. Poetry by McCrae   The Animal Too Big to Kill (Persea Books, 2015) "Reapers" by Jean Toomer "Go Down, Death" by James Weldon Johnson "Lighthead’s Guide to the Galaxy" by Terrance Hayes Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038