Lee Varon is a writer and social worker. Her poetry and short stories have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and published in Artful Dodge, Blue Mesa Review, Euphony, Hawai’i Review, High Plains Literary Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Pleiades, Permafrost, So To Speak, Soundings East, and Willow Review, among others.

Lee Varon

YOU AND STONEWALL JACKSON
for my grandmother

I wondered if being related to Stonewall Jackson
was like the Chippendale chairs that turned out

to be knockoffs, or the antique highboy
made in 1967.

But he had the same high forehead
and straight nose as you,

the same firm jaw;
his set on the “lost cause” of the Confederacy.

Better to fight for a lost
cause that is noble, you once said.

I wondered,
brushing off spider webs

from crepe myrtle
color of blushing cheeks

as we sat at the cemetery
on those hot afternoons,

if you felt life had been
a noble lost cause

but no,
you’d re-written everything.

Stonewall Jackson was considered
the greatest tactical commander of the civil war

and you arranged your life
the way you dreamed it.

Your husband never had an affair
he was shot by some lunatic not a jealous husband.

We pulled up the weeds
near everyone’s headstone
watered the geraniums
and went home.

Of Jackson you said:
In death he became an icon.
 — Lee Varon

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