Morgan christie
documents
when we found the plantation
my mother’s family was on
i thought there may be some fulfillment
under soft carolina suns
in the town she was raised
but it was as far back as we could go
this place that wasn’t the beginning
and the matter of documentation arose
its adversarial tone
its illusive sure thing
so my cousin began to do it himself
to take note of the people we were
in a history that never bothered
to find the faces of our mirrors
stuck in time on buried loose leaf
to create the proof the rest of time
erased because he knows what it
means even though i’m not sure i do
in my adversarial tone
in my illusive sure thing
i am unsure of what it means to
start a thing after it has commenced
to document fractures of a whole we
cannot hold because we are after
and then i think of our grandparents
their light and knowing and fear and
our parents and the ones before that
claimed existence when it wasn’t theirs
in their adversarial tone
in their illusive sure thing
and so who am i to wonder when we are
but fractures of a new beginning that
we can choose to write and photo and one
we can remember and make ours like the
ones before our documentation could not
on the seas and ships and before the soft suns
the ones we still see in mirrors because our
faces are their documentation
in adversarial tone
in illusive certainty
when we found the plantation
my mother’s family was on
i thought there may be some fulfillment
under soft carolina suns
in the town she was raised
but it was as far back as we could go
this place that wasn’t the beginning
and the matter of documentation arose
its adversarial tone
its illusive sure thing
so my cousin began to do it himself
to take note of the people we were
in a history that never bothered
to find the faces of our mirrors
stuck in time on buried loose leaf
to create the proof the rest of time
erased because he knows what it
means even though i’m not sure i do
in my adversarial tone
in my illusive sure thing
i am unsure of what it means to
start a thing after it has commenced
to document fractures of a whole we
cannot hold because we are after
and then i think of our grandparents
their light and knowing and fear and
our parents and the ones before that
claimed existence when it wasn’t theirs
in their adversarial tone
in their illusive sure thing
and so who am i to wonder when we are
but fractures of a new beginning that
we can choose to write and photo and one
we can remember and make ours like the
ones before our documentation could not
on the seas and ships and before the soft suns
the ones we still see in mirrors because our
faces are their documentation
in adversarial tone
in illusive certainty