High Water Everywhere (PB) (2022)

Poetry collection by Gary Copeland Lilley. Lilley's collection addresses flashpoints in African American history including the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898 and Hurricane Katrina. Second edition with new poems.

EXCERPT:

Colonel Waddell on the Morning of November 10, 1898

from High Water Everywhere

They vote Republican black. They walk

Our streets with their heads up, with more freedom

Than a white man, and now we have been made

To conduct our city's business under

The rule of carpet-baggers and negroes.

White men will suffer eternally

If we do not honor that it's our blood

That makes North Carolina sacred ground.

If we don't act they'll soon have the land

And all our grand history that's on it:

The Confederate graves, all the gray men

From all our families, to their proud deaths

Give glory, honor the white way of life.

Let black bodies choke the Cape Fear River.