They Buried Him In The Sand
For John Henry the man and all the unnamed men buried
at the Great Bend Tunnel, Talcott, West Virginia
Ghosts graze
the land,
and the grass—
it tumbles off the lip
into that old
roadside tangle
barbed wire
kudzu
caution tape
soft sinkhole muck
What the ground
holds where
the ground collapses—
Sun lifts up
bright, bright
Down the road
a flat
space of gravel
stones raked
stones ordered
An amphitheater
sudden
in its maintenance
And a whole army
of little signs
Sudden signage
I hope you enjoyed the doves
What the ground holds
crawls all over
my skin
in the sunlight
Does my breath catch
from the knowing
of the body
or the already-knowing
of the story
they buried him
but it is after I know it
that I see it—this
hole in the ground
with its slump
of old concrete
is a gravesite
The sun lifts
the spirit—
sun-summoned spirits
rising out of
the blanch-white
of gravel dust
(but there’s no sand here,
no sand)
Past the gravesite
the world gets groomed
and then by the tracks
his statue
Statue
of a Black man
famously
worked
to death
John Henry died from a race
song says
he hammered his fool self to death
sign says
hero of the working class
song says
I’d die with a hammer in my hand
sign says
the real truth is of a man who stood up for his convictions against technological advancements
sign says
John Henry died from a race
sign says
I hope you enjoyed the doves
sun bright
on the quiet ground
says nothing
nothing
the man
they buried him in the sand
the myth
stood up for his convictions against technological advancement
the legend
this statue was erected in 1972, by a group of people with the same determination as the one it honors
JOHN HENRY DIED FROM A RACE
WITH THE STEAM DRILL, DURING
CONSTRUCTION OF THE TUNNEL FOR
THE C. & O. RAILWAY CO.
and the signs
take pains
to make clear
that even
if he isn’t
buried here
Quite a few of the workers had an abject fear of working where someone had just died. It was in the contractor’s best interest to downplay these deaths and accidents as much as possible. Rumor has it that mass graves are located on each end of the tunnel and at the fill before the old trestle where it crosses Hungards Creek “where they buried men and mules.”
His statue
looks over these
signs
with their
pointed stakes
over
the railbed
the picnic tables
chalky chain link
dull beneath the sun
groomed gravel
the amphitheater
back towards the fill
back towards the creek
back towards the buried
who were driven
by a confederate
who would
work men to death
but on his honor
refused bankruptcy
as ill suited to a
good
name
His statue
looks back
towards
the gravesite
Maybe his own and
Surely
Someone’s
It is irrelevant if the story of John Henry is true or a legend
His statue
holds a hole
where
someone shot
a bullet
right through
his chest
II.
On my walk out
I am still a while
in the thick part
of the trees
far from the sun
cold here,
cold green low to the ground
still til
nothing sees me
that isn’t
being still with me
I can hear the man
in the yard just
over the hill
I can see the backside
of the welcome sign
where a woman
just pulled up
and grabbed
a carefully hidden
plastic bag
I can hear
next door
Someone keeps hollering
One minute he’s singing
and the next minute
he’s right back to
practicing
his shot
Ella Latham is a writer from South Carolina. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in SoFloPoJo, miniskirt magazine, and the Peauxdunque Review, where it was selected as the creative nonfiction category winner in the 2021 Words and Music Writing Competition and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She lives and works in the North Carolina mountains.
Praise from Asiya Wadud for “They Buried Him In The Sand”:
The fan-folds of American history diminish the distance of the past and instead creates one, contiguous field between past, present, and foreseeable future. Seemingly ancient ghosts remain at the center of our imaginary, animating our mythology; haunting the landscapes; wending their way across the distance.
What astounds me in “They Buried Him In The Sand” is the proximity of the utterly quotidian and foreboding violence. This closeness belies the myth and formulation of a distant past and instead we are asked to contend with the ways that “ghosts graze/ the land”. These opening lines are instructions for how to enter this piece. As such, we enter with the knowledge that the ghosts have gone nowhere. Their sturdiness is uncontested. They float up, they graze and hover, but they don’t dissipate.
Throughout the piece, “S’s” nimbly slide across the page, creating a reverberation and reverence all at once: “song says” is followed by “signs says” which is followed by “song says.” Elsewhere, we have “the sun lifts/ the spirit—/ sun-summoned spirit.”
Against the backdrop of violence are moments of transportive clarity and radiance as well as reminders that “nothing sees me/ that isn’t/ being still with me.” The subterranean brutality abutting attempts at order, jostling for space and attention, though it is in the space of their prolonged tension that the poem exists. As the piece notes, “Past the gravesite/ the world gets groomed.” This poem instructs its readers to peel back, to look past the neat exterior to see what exists under the veneer of uncleaved space.