Raid at Combahee River, June 2, 1863


By AMANDA GUNN      |     POETRY      |     VOLUME 48.4      |     2014 AUBURN WITNESS POETRY PRIZE WINNER


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They moved over
                                        the rice fields, not
in flight
                            not
in murmurations
                                        not moving
as one black body against
                                                        the wind, but in
the terrible
                            breaking of a dam
over the
              Combahee River.
                                        Women jostling babies, packets
of bread and fat,
                                grasping
chickens, holding
                                    pots still
hot with rice,
                                        men dragging pigs, shouldering
children, children running
                                                        on thin limbs
catching up or
                           being caught under,
                                                                      where
alligators snapped,
                              bit
                                        as the maw
of the shackle.
                            The sly
                                        boats whistled, signaled:
we are here, you
                            seven hundred fifty-six, you
shall not be left
                                        to the Confederacy.
Out front:
                            the General
watching for torpedoes,
                                                        Harriet
singing a hymn,
                                           Moses,
parting
                      the waters.




AMANDA GUNN is the recipient of the 2014 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York. She lives and teaches in Baltimore, Maryland, where she is an MFA candidate and Owens Scholars Fellow in The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Redivider, Southern Humanities Review, Thrush, New South, Weave Magazine, and Winter Tangerine Review.

VOLUME 48.4

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This poem is one of Amanda Gunn's three winning poems from our 2014 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York. Learn more about the contest here.