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Southern Spaces
A journal about real and imagined spaces and places of the US South and their global connections

Lynching photograph: February 11, 1906: Gadsden, Alabama

The rope grips the iron
where the iron bites into its hold.
A noose of rust, dried blood.

The dew has frozen in its twines,
thicker near the river,
from which it's climbed

weaker and weaker, all night long.

 

Published in Murder Ballads (2005).
Text may vary slightly from the video reading.

Published: 7 March 2008
© 2008 Jake Adam York and Southern Spaces