Personal History

The world’s largest Confederate monument

was too big to perceive on my earliest trips to the park.

Unlike my parents, I was not an immigrant

but learned, in speech and writing, to represent.

Picnicking at the foot and sometimes peak

of the world’s largest Confederate monument,

we raised our Cokes to the first Georgian president.

His daughter was nine like me, but Jimmy Carter,

unlike my father, was not an immigrant.

Teachers and tour guides stressed the achievement

of turning three vertical granite acres into art.

Since no one called it a Confederate monument,

it remained invisible, like outdated wallpaper meant

long ago to be stripped. Nothing at Stone Mountain Park

echoed my ancestry, but it’s normal for immigrants

not to see themselves in landmarks. On summer nights,

fireworks and laser shows obscured, with sparks,

the world’s largest Confederate monument.

Our story began when my parents arrived as immigrants.