Loyalties, Savannah

by Tim Lynch

Nellie Gordon died alone in her bed; her son’s wife, waiting
in a room adjacent, watched William Gordon’s apparition

walk out her door and down the stairs.
Her husband first thought her hysterical

as she crawled and palmed the hall rug. The butler
told them, both teetering the high step, “The General

come fetch her hisself.” When Sherman slept
in the Green-Meldrim Mansion, the wives next door

clanged the door bell day and night for a week.
Sherman ordered the bell removed, reinstalled a week after

at Lincoln’s request (the clapper missing); the live oaks
have been banging their leaves since, each hissing

to the others no no it was more like this. Moss
tangles their branches, which don’t reach (as one

might want to say) so much as grow: it’s as if the brides
buried under every square had risen and tossed their rotted veils

up behind them as they walked: it’s as if the trees are sick
women weighing in their fingers, against the pull of a

welcome breeze, the empty nets of their shed locks.

Tim Lynch grew up in Delaware, but has known he was a born Southerner ever since a woman he’d never met said to watch his charm around the girls. He has been previously published in The Gihon River Review and APIARY and is currently pursuing his MFA at Rutgers-Camden. “My work is strongly influenced by natural images, and those experienced in the South are by far the most strange and therefore compelling,” he says.