Late Morning, Wednesday, October 1, 1919: Milligan Giles, Barely Conscious, Lies In The Mud, Shot Through The Chin Along Govan Slough By Henry Smiddy Of The Missouri Pacific Railroad – A Bullet Left Lodged In Milligan’s Neck.

 

At fifteen, what do I know or what

Should I know? I know the wind’s

Slim and the mud’s cool, as I ache

Like I never have before. As I lay

Dying? Will I be shot again and then

Again, motionless? I hear one body

Has been shot 26 times today before

They were through: a will to void

Is hardly the morning lust foreseen.

 

Crows caw amid distant and close

Shooting with Albert, my brother,

Hunted down, an animal in ebony

Bloom? Bearing five or six bullet

Holes – one through a fated head

Out an ear into the open fields, for

All things want to be free, free to

Rise above these bodies, shocked

And declined, lain to loom null.

 

The stories to pick up speed once

More bodies are counted near those

Who tell about us, the number here

Who wear the scars of history, blame,

And high lies. A soft speech to make

Up another word for how, where I

Lay among many, waiting for other

That may not happen at all, that may

Be parted by way of yet another plunge.