Blue-Tail Fly

Nigger Pine

67 Nigger Pine After the funeral of President Lincoln Whether he loved us or no— we draped black ribbon across our windows and doors. Our long faces, Lord, how we wailed. Would he have had us remain, or sail off to some namesake colony? No matter, forlorn, we mourned, even as we recalled the “nigger” his tongue wagged to the press— into his wife’s hot ear. Perhaps our brows would never have met, perhaps our visage he disparaged as much as his own misshapen jaw, still, he resisted the lies of unwieldy romance preferring practical solutions to peculiar situations. No, he did not proclaim love for us. The old ones say in some African tribes there is no word for love—only action, deeds, and duty may say what the mouth will not. “Nigger Pine” was the common term for the scrub trees that grew on the blood-engorged battlefields. ...