Lawrence Sullivan Ross
In Aggieland where the Kool-Aid is laced with bled maroon were they conscious of the irony in 1918, preserving their Confederate General hero in bronze skin? Today, Sully, I mapped out your statue like you mapped out the West, my legs dangling, sitting on your copper head and Van Dyke beard. All so I could say this: When the immigrant sculptor, Pompeo Coppini, was re-forging your sole into existence I bet you struggled and resisted your creator. When your fingers were being hammered into submission you clutched in desperation didn’t you at the white work floor lights before being carted away in a colored wheel barrel. At your dedication you protested the brown and black pebbles underneath your podium. They reminded you too much of the people screaming freedom amid Reconstruction where the only thing you diversified was your wealth. Now installed on Texas A&M campus you inspect it with an endless reveille and your face looks so dissatisfied: like a Christian virgin on her wedding night. Over decades students were told placing pennies at the statue boots of another white landowner brought good luck on exams. Today I found Confederate flags hung over your shoulders during a protest. I saw white students lob their bodies under your pedestal protecting you. I saw black students throw their bodies on top of your face to destroy you. But how do we kill the ideals of your uncivil uniform after you’ve taken it off? After your racist beliefs were hidden away, calculated into the promises of state politics. You in your old age fit yourself for the rags of Community Samaritan. But does it mean anything if you flooded our ant hills with blood? Sully, you were the son of an Iowa Indian fighter! You were only eleven battling your first one. I wish the blood had stuck with you. I wish it had dried in your nostrils so every time you massacred a Comanche village you’d sneeze and the blood wouldn’t be yours. I wish it had ground under your fingernails and implanted itself in your nail bed so that every time you grew you saw more of them in you. Your hatred and history is bleached and obscured, protected by presidents who hotfixed our history. Rumors still churn at A&M your Klan robes lie buried somewhere underneath campus. College Station became your timeless tabernacle by its own name the very definition of transient. Nothing stays long in that town. Except the bigotry you represent. So I hope you listened well, Sully, because it was your last chance. It’s after midnight and I’m standing in front of you without a mask, wanting the world to witness me meeting your statue’s glare with hammers in my bag and throat.
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Antique Existence
We humans love reused things, reminding ourselves that we are all reworked matter and come pre-scuffed. We prefer homeless objects in antique stores to dispossessed people on the boulevards because things ask nothing of us. Holding jadeite table wear and repurposed crowbar lets us believe that there is hope to be useful, appreciated, meaningful. With each outcast object I invent a new backstory into my worldview because I am obsessed with what something was before it was. But not everything has a satisfying story to tell or wants to be in one. They just are. Existing and then not.
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Casey Aimer holds a bachelor’s in creative writing from Texas A&M and is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Texas State University. For over a decade he has performed across the country for both competitive spoken word and page poetry. He continues advocating for radical thoughts and honest questions expressed in unconventional styles. This is his first feature on the Fictional Café.
The last line of the second poem is extremely powerful about the nihilistic quality of our existence.