Andre F. Peltier

An American in Paris

No one was lynched
at the Eiffel Tower.
Built in 1993 and
capped with the great
red hat.
Long after that desperate
city’s historic hanging trees
rotted and fell.
Long after
the trees turned to dust:
food for insects,
food for mushrooms.
A remedy for every
wrong.
Northeast Texas
the prairie,
the Red River valley.
It brightened no
pathways.
It witnessed the death of
Henry Smith.
Fairgrounds: 1893.
The spectators cheered
& ate lunch.
They brought salmon, strawberries,
cheese and grapes.
They brought boiled chickens,
veal, and pigeon pies.
Mrs. Beeton would have been
proud.
Not so, Mrs. Wells-Barnett.
No pigeon pies for
Henry Smith.
No salmon or cheese
as his remains glowed long
into the night.
Paris,
when it sizzles.

He confessed,
but as Ida B. suggests,
“to excuse its infamy,
the mob almost invariably
reports the monstrous falsehood
that its victim
made a full confession
before he was
hanged.”

And what of McClelland?
Dragged, dead,
charges dropped.
Harry Dean Stanton didn’t
see that coming
when he took off down
Highway 10,
past Cabazon beasts
and tumbleweed.
He arrived in East Texas,
to claim his history,
his birthright.
Big Boy’s birthright rebuffed.
And justice denied.

Before the Eifel
Tower with
the big red hat,
before the Walmart,
Walgreens, & Hobby
Lobby,
there were the
fairgrounds.
Before Harry Dean
Stanton,
Dean Stockwell,
& Nastassja Kinski,
there were the
fairgrounds.
Before Route 82
cut through the eastern
prairie,
the cattle land
& over the Red River,
there were the fairgrounds.
They sat, a foreboding
reminder of the picnics and
plunder.

The county spectacle.
From far and wide,
farmers brought
their prized crops,
their best hogs,
their fatted calves.
Children rolled wooden
rings, ate ice cream
& popped corn,
ran races.
Wives gossiped,
tended their babies,
shared their
needlework.
The living fairground
buzzed & cackled.
The living fairgrounds
at the center of
summer.

Andre F. Peltier is a Lecturer III at Eastern Michigan University where he has taught African American Literature, Afrofuturism, Science Fiction, poetry, and Freshman Composition since 1998. He lives in Ypsilanti, MI with his wife, kids, turtles, dog, and cat. In his free time, he obsesses about soccer and comic books. His poems are forthcoming in Big Whoopie Deal, The Great Lakes Review, and La Piccioletta Barca. Twitter: @aandrefpeltier