Perfect velveteened frame for a fallen hero: Melbourne Langston Arvin, cavalry- riding great-grandfather. Fine horseman—flouting the entire Union Army
at Gettysburg by galloping around it, Your unit capturing a 40-wagon supply train—instead of following orders and bringing Lee reconnaissance he’d ordered—that might’ve won the key battle. You helped your flamboyant Captain lose the Civil war.
Thank God.

A bloody inheritance
being kin to a bootleg
Greycoat. Riding with
a blond cavalier, whose
misplaced gallantry blind-
folded Lee, best general
of the war. Himself already
blindfolded by believing
God made whites two/fifths
more human than blacks.
Now parties, causes, cabals
crisscross uniforms and skin.
A living five/fifths union
of shards.