for residents of the Wicomico County Almshouse, 1871-1923
I beheld until the beast was slain
and its body destroyed and given
to the blazing flame.
-Daniel 7:11
I.Deemed
Every person within the confines
of Wicomico or Somerset Counties,
Maryland, not being insane,
who has no visible means of maintenance
from property or personal labor
or is not permanently supported
by his or her friends or relatives,
who lives idle, without employment,
& every person who leads
a dissolute or disorderly course
of life & cannot give account
of the means by which he or she procures
a legitimate livelihood, & every nomad,
gypsy, or other person practicing
that which is commonly called
fortune-telling by acts, signs, or omens,
for value or otherwise, or any common
gambler, shall be deemed a vagabond;
& every person who wanders
begging in the limits
of Wicomico or Somerset Counties
from house to house or sits or stands
or takes position in any place
or begs from passersby, either by words
or gestures, shall be deemed
a beggar; & every person who wanders
& lodges in outhouses, sheds,
marketplaces, barracks, barns
or in any public building or in the open air
& has no permanent place
of abode or visible means of maintenance
shall be deemed a vagrant.
II. Preliminary
there are two small frame
buildings dilapidated
slave quarters unsuccessfully
repurposed rubble erect
for these dirt counties’
mad whelps reluctantly
the pity funds trickle
three colored & a lone
white patient my candids
two attendants sir appearing
almost hostile there is nothing
wherefore the deranged
restrained their countenances
toad-eyed by my flash
III.Canary
my cold hominy
between the bars for
Herbert who yellow
because the kernels
his feathers like them
boy they say boy
you stare that bird down
like it saint it heal
your slow ass so
when they fist
back my batter-stars
swirling as I keel
whispering Herbert if
they hurt you Jesus
will rend heaven though
mama said no beasts
of air nor land nor sea nor
lilies spinning not
in glory is they arrayed
IV. Wind
a hand need not splay
near a sash nor baseboard nor
cracked plaster gaps one
can sit or stand or
take position here & know
the vicious whip-rush
whoosh of wind ripping
crusted meal-sack blankets
off cots to splay over
floorboards stooping sir
despite repugnancy I folded
one wants an arsenal
of soap the smears
of feces blood & there
under one a pile of teeth
V. Cuffed
stink like shore shad | like cabbage
boiled | July outhouse reeking these
teeth if teeth could grind the slop
my wrists | both them | gnaw them
& rub the stumps against my neck
VI. Orderly
at night her moans to shrieking
sheered you must understand
feeble-minded like the rest
she had these fits her nails
opened forearms like gutted
shad she would lift
her gown & stroke herself
before us without
regard for shame or
propriety you cannot bring
the governor’s little camera
to this remove pretending
that any goodly Christian
elsewhere could stand
the infernal odor or
the pussing scratches night
after goddamn night sir
some liberties I took I
I took until she hushed
VII. Plummet
the deceased left
bedded one two days &
the swale skin jading
a convenience common
practice for the undertaker
field gloves stripping down
this dawn batty Margaret
ajar I witnessed the window
her ruffle-rush plummeting
from stories up it is
difficult to conceive sir
that anything worse in
this state exists
VIII. Rash
behold the abandonment
down seven country miles
a parched stalk nation
where irrigators flake
vermillion in September’s
relentless drought obliterating
where razor grass weeps
over the concrete blob-base
& headstone skewed
roadside for the asylum
so long reclaimed by weeds
one could fist them out forever
until a rust-dusk blazes
up the spectered rash
its tyranny to deem
there the carriage-creased lane
there the drooped porch stoop
snaggletooth shingles slanting
& there the length of chain
kinked about the throat
of midnight gagging
Adam Tavel recently won the inaugural Permafrost Book Prize for his collection Plash & Levitation, which will be published by the University of Alaska Press in spring 2015. He is also the author of The Fawn Abyss (Salmon Poetry, forthcoming) and the epistolary chapbook Red Flag Up (Kattywompus). Tavel won the 2010 Robert Frost Award, and his recent poems appear in The Massachusetts Review, The Journal, Quarterly West, Passages North, Southern Indiana Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Salamander, among others. At Length previously published his sequence “Where His Lines Run.”
“Until the Beast Was Slain” was inspired in part by “The Use and Implications of Photographs for Mental Health Care Reform: The Maryland State Lunacy Commission State Care Campaign, 1908-1910,” an online exhibit by Dr. Robert W. Schoeberlein, Director of Special Collections at the Maryland State Archives.
