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Instructions for Time Travel
You must go through Mr. Jefferson
along his row of chinaberry trees
behind the ruined smokehouse
in unmarked tracts, under fieldstones
with no carvings, no monuments
with a few leaves shadowing the mulch
near scattered weeds, in sunken lines
while the sun walks in the day
at the end of the day
in an oval of brushed earth
just as the soft path finishes
under branches
where the dead are always saying
what they always say:
Write about me.
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Kiki Petrosino is the author of White Blood: a Lyric of Virginia (2020) and three other poetry books, all from Sarabande. She holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago and the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop. Her memoir, Bright, was released from Sarabande in 2022. She directs the Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia, where she is a Professor of Poetry. Petrosino is the recipient of a DeWitt Wallace/Readers Digest fellowship from MacDowell artist residency, a Pushcart Prize, a Fellowship in Creative Writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, the UNT Rilke Prize, & the Spalding Prize, among other honors.
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Isaac Jefferson (1775-1853). See this link for more.
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