Poetry After after Jacob Lawrence’s John Brown Series, by Andy Fogle

The Place of the Skull

(after Jacob Lawrence’s John Brown Series, #1, 1977) 
 
By the cloudy road,  
outside the gate,   
near the city, 
 
trinities abound: 
hair in three sweat- 
soaked shanks hanging down; 
 
a nail—diagonal   
of light, and so, 
so long—for each wrist,  
 
and one for both feet; 
the blood branching 
three streams from one source. 
 
If Golgotha, the hill  
in the background, is 
“the place of the skull,” 
 
then the cross is what 
emerges from  
or pierces the throat.  
 
No faces. Not Christ’s, not 
the centurion who 
utters, Surely this 
 
is a righteous man,  
the son of God, and 
can’t watch anymore, 
 
not yours, not mine 
not any shambled one 
of us passersby.  
  
**

Homefront

(after Jacob Lawrence’s John Brown Series, #2) 
 
3 rifles 4 pikes on the wall 
5 children at the table swearing 
 
to serve what I swear to serve 
 
all our heads are bowed eyes 
our closed hands clasp such 
 
darkness in our clothes our 
 
weapons’ handles the table 
and the cover of the bible 
 
with its red-edged pages 
 
but this scene’s crux 
is surely the violet twilight 
 
through the open doorway 
 
the coming dusk the colour 
of pike blades in cold air light 
 
and the thin winter tree:  
 
when one branch breaks 
the other two fork 
   
**

Skirmish Ground

(after Jacob Lawrence’s John Brown Series, #9) 
 
only the broken  
and gouged studs of walls 
 
roof beams no roof 
three steps leading up  
 
to no door no one  
at the golden table 
 
no body in the chair 
no food on the plate 
 
but blood is  
everywhere 
 
on the floor  
in the yard 
 
and the mountains  
beyond with one  
 
massive cloud 
in the clean blue sky 
 
**

The Cutting Light

(after Jacob Lawrence’s John Brown Series, #19) 
 
There are no faces 
to be seen, only  
their cutting light  
 
among coils of night sky  
like wave swells, in the sweeps  
of clay sky scattered with sparks,  
 
from the blood-dirt beneath  
the bodies we do not see, 
only that cutting light: 
 
21 spines of blaze, 
21 sticks of lightning, 
21 lines uprising the dark, 
 
21 shafts jaggeding, 
21 frozen slashes, 
21 sun shards, 
 
21 chips of scorched ice,  
21 scalene triangles,  
21 star-fragments,  
 
21 moon-lit clippings of ocean waves,  
21 burning clippings from a child’s drawing,  
21 directives glowing, 
 
21 contraband hopes,  
21 mounted seething embers,  
21 eyelash sacrifices, 
 
21 bones flashing righteous,  
21 gifts of cleaving, 
21 pinpoint lines sliced by slicing,  
 
21 glints in this abyss,  
21 pikes hidden  
then revealed, 
 
21 faces not 
to be seen, hidden  
and thus revealed.  

**

Fireglow

(after Jacob Lawrence’s John Brown Series, #21) 
 
Clothed in night,  
as fireglow fills  
 
the background, the cross  
 
he holds is red 
and far out of square, 
 
his hair a scrawl 
 
of black and white,  
and although his head 
 
slumps, the hood remains 
 
upright. There is no face 
to be seen.  
 
Andy Fogle

Andy Fogle is the author of Across from Now and seven chapbooks of poetry, including Arc & Seam: Poems of Farouk Goweda, co-translated with Walid Abdallah. He’s from Virginia Beach and the DC area, and now lives with his family in upstate NY, teaching high school. He was the recipient of a 2021 Individual Artist Grant from Saratoga Arts to write poems related to abolitionist John Brown. www.foglejunk.squarespace.com