1.
These are the fever prophecies of soldiers
bound at Andersonville, one has drunk
fouled water, eaten maggot laden bread
and when he crooks his neck to see
behind him, views instead
black crows with singed feathers.

2.
“I have seen the sky alight with ravens,
blotting out the sun, casting shadows on the fields
where men with hardened arms lift bails of wheat
to burn in sacrifice to ‘Surplus’ gods;

and when the evening creeps across horizons
I can catch a gunfighter’s silhouette-- perhaps
the lingering ghost of Jesse James casting shadows
on the wall of a Missouri cave, or Wyatt Earp, still
vilified despite the rugged jaws and deadpan grins
of countless movie reenactments:

Let me be aiming a shotgun underneath the table
while holding marked cards with an ace up my sleeve--
it is, after all, an American dream.”

4.
“When John Lea was captured by Union Troops,
Custer saw to it that his injuries were treated,
and when Lea was released, he married the woman
set to nurse him back to health. Custer
attended the wedding in his Union uniform,
and if the confederate soldiers bristled
it was not evident.”

Victor Infante

Victor Infante was our Orange County Museletter correspondent until the summer of 2001, when he moved back to New England. His collection of poems, Learning To Speak, was released by FarStarFire Press in 1999. His previous feature articles for About Poetry are:

• “The Center Cannot Hold: Slam, Academia & the Battle for America’s Bourgeoisie,” an essay on the generational cycles of poets & poetic institutions, class & politics in American poetry, slam poetry’s evolution into a new establishment.
  
  
• “The Beat Goes On: Lawrence Ferlinghetti Is Still a Rebel,” an interview with Ferlinghetti on the Poet as Outsider.
  
  
• “Stranded: Poet Mark Strand Preaches Political Indifference at UCI,” a response to the effort to divorce poetry from politics.
  
  
• “But What If These Are Poetic Times?,” a commentary on the furor following LA Weekly’s fall 1999 review of local poetry.

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