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Jim Limber the Adopted Mulatto Son of Jefferson Davis Visits His Adoptive Parents After the War

Shane McCrae

The man said I could see them if I wanted

He said America would never be

A place where we could live together not at

Least in my lifetime but the damned don’t see

No important differences between the Ne-

gro and the White the damned don’t see no bad

In folks if what bad they done they ain’t free-

ly chose to do the damned don’t see no good

In folks if what good they done they ain’t hoped

To do and the man he said part of momma

Varina part of daddy Jeff alread-

y was burning in Hell I ought to join them

He said we might see good from seeing each other

Tortured we might finally see each other

Shane McCrae is the author of eight poetry collections, including Cain Named the Animal (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2022).

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About this Poem

“One morning, as she drove her carriage home from running errands, Varina Davis saw a mixed-race child being beaten by a black woman, presumably his mother. She took the child, a seven year-old named Jim Limber, from the woman, and brought him home to live with herself and her husband, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America. Limber was, in turn, taken from the Davises a little over a year later, when the the Union Army captured them in Irwinville, Georgia, and he never saw them again.”
—Shane McCrae

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More by this poet

In the Event Of

Officer how you know I’m dancing is the body

-cam. Look, I’m riding centuries of whips, the first half

Of the ghost, arms out the window up, the second half

Arms flat on the pavement, palms down, now the ghost is whole

My arms stretched forward, like I’m bowing, but if I

Were standing, stretched above my head. Officer how

Shane McCrae

2021

What Sadness Anywhere Is Sadness

^{—for Melissa}

What sadness anywhere is sadness where
I could just stand and walk to you from sadness
Go home to you though I bring home my sadness
What sadness there though I have felt sad there

Before when I come home from far away
What sadness then or from three blocks uptown
My office where I write this poem down
In a room full of the dimness that fills spac-

Shane McCrae

2020

From the Ground It Must Have Looked Like Its Wings Were Not a Part of It

I rode to Heaven on a bird that did-

n’t look like any bird I ever saw

Before I saw it the bird’s wings were wide

And long and brightly colored and had no

Feathers but panels like glass held together

By black bones criss- crossing them from the ground

Shane McCrae

2019

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Jim Limber the Adopted Mulatto Son of Jefferson Davis Visits His Adoptive Parents After the War

More by this poet

In the Event Of

What Sadness Anywhere Is Sadness

From the Ground It Must Have Looked Like Its Wings Were Not a Part of It

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