One Poem
Tabulation
from Tabloid Facts in A History of Rome and Floyd County by George Macruder Battey Jr. (1922)
Did you know that—John Hume brought
the first bath-tub in Rome, from Charleston,
about 1850? Daniel R. Mitchell owned the first piano?
Coosa Old Town was an Indian village on the Coosa
River near Rome, South Rome side, and was
destroyed on or about Oct. 17, 1793, by Gen. John
Sevier, ancestor of numerous Romans? An erratic
character known to the Cherokee Indians as the
“Widow Fool” operated a ferry in 1819 at the forks
of the Oostanaula and Hightower (Etowah) Rivers?
Miss Eliza Frances Andrews, botanist, has had
her habitat in Rome since 1911? Major Ridge’s ferry,
opposite his home on the Oostanaula, was seized in
1835 by a white man named Garrett, who claimed
that Ridge would not run it or let anybody else
run it? Father Ryan, Indiana poet, once visited Rome to
see about the Kane property in New York, and was the
guest of Mrs. Mary Adkins, mother of Wm. H. Adkins?
Thos. A. Wheat, of Ridge Valley, loaded the first ten-inch
Mortar cartridge fired at Fort Sumter in 1861? The Santa
Ana silver service, captured by Houston at the Battle of
San Jacinto, was once the property of Henry Pope at Pope’s
Ferry? Heavy guns furnished the Cherokee Artillery
by the Nobles were captured by Gen. Sherman at Resaca?
Rome once had thirteen whiskey saloons? Before
Barney Swimmer and Terrapin, Cherokees were
hung on Broad Street for robbing and murdering Ezekiel
Blatchford (or Braselton), of Hall County, a land
seeker, in 1837, they were allowed to take a last swim
under guard at the forks of the Etowah and the Oostanaula?
Are you saying you didn’t know, you didn’t know, how could you
have known? Each glint in river water? How will you atone?
At knowing’s nexus while lives are breaking in the dam?
∩
Alicia Wright is the author of You’re Called By The Same Sound (Thirdhand Books) and A Coin, A Moth, A Literary Journal (DoubleCross Press), both forthcoming in 2025. She lives in Iowa City, where she serves as editor of Annulet, publisher of Annulet Editions, and host of the poetry reading series Normie Creep in the Sacred Grove. She works as Managing Editor of The Iowa Review.