The Brooklyn Rail

Certain facts stand.

A river mouth is the part of the river
where the river widens out to flow
into a broader place. This broader
place may be another river, a lake,
an estuary, a sea, or an ocean. The
river is said to debouch, or cut into
these places. In the field of fluvial
geography, a debouch is any place
where any water flows out of a
narrow passage. Creeks into rivers,
streams into lakes, rivers through
gorges and out. The term “debouch”
describes this relation more generally
and can also mean the emergence
of soldiers into a larger field, the
smaller confine being called a defile.
Much like a gorge, a defile. In fact
this is the geographical term. How
many terms of land are also terms
of war, of domination, of strategy, of
offense and defense? I don’t have an
answer. It is simply a question. Some
questions beg an answer and some
questions do not. Mostly, I am asking
to ask.

 

 

 

 

 

My father was born near a river in the
South. The South here is the southern
United States, the river is the
Mississippi, and my father is Prentiss
James Jackson, born to Angeline and
George Sr. in 1949. He was born at
home and does not know what time.
His birth occurred in a small city in
Mississippi called Greenville, which
rests in the Mississippi Delta, also
called the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta
for its arrangement between those
two rivers. The town was destroyed
during the Civil War by Union soldiers
in gunboats. It was rebuilt on higher
ground, then wrecked again in 1927
by the Great Mississippi Flood. Black
families were barred from evacuating
this city, given Red Cross tents with
dirt floors and inferior rations. Black
men were made to stay and work the
levees without pay, made to wear
laborer tags in order to receive rations
and to show to which plantation they
“belonged.” Black women with no
husband or no working husband were
barred from receiving supplies and
rations unless they had a letter from
a white man, any white man. We are
and were a Black family. I once asked
my father if he would ever move back
to our land in Greenville and he said
but what if it floods? He would but
wouldn’t want to be wrecked by a
flood like that.

We know that Terrance Hayes said
water has no endgame, no ambition.
It is pure procedure and that Toni
Morrison said they straightened out
the Mississippi River in places, to
make room for houses and livable
acreage. Occasionally the river floods
these places. ‘Floods’ is the word they
use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is
remembering. Remembering where
it used to be. All water has a perfect
memory and is forever trying to get
back to where it was.

 

 

 

 

Bournemouth, Great Yarmouth,
Weymouth,                              Portsmouth,
Plymouth,                                    Yarmouth,
Dartmouth,                                   Exmouth,
Monmouth,                               Tynemouth,
Sidmouth,                                Teignmouth,
Barmouth,                            Grangemouth,
Cockermouth,                      Lossiermouth,
Eyemouth, Falmouth—these are towns in the United Kingdom with mouths. In the New England towns and cities I wander and chart, I find these names as streets, avenues, lanes. 

Malaga Island finds itself at the mouth of the New Meadows River, which flows tidal into Maine. For 52 years the island was owned by Eli Perry and squatted by mixed race fishing families. The island was likely first settled by the children of Benjamin Darling, who legend tells was freed after saving his enslaver, Captain Darling, during a storm at sea. Ben Darling himself purchased the nearby Harbor Island in 1794. On Malaga Island, the children, their descendants and families, grew to a group of 45. The families of the island were disparaged by mainlanders as degenerates for their race-mixing. In 1912, the island was purchased by the state of Maine even as missionaries attempted to buy it on behalf of the families. By the state, the families were evicted from the island and six of the children sent to the so-named Maine School for the Feeble-Minded, where four of them would die. Most others concealed their ancestry and passed into white families in Maine, save the Tripp family of Connecticut.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes there are no words or
the words simply are not the right
ones. Or sometimes the words don’t
match, or they jumble. It’s okay, it’s
alright, it’s all flow. Flow, flow, flow.
This is what we do: flow. Even when it
appears arrhythmic there’s flow. Such
was the pace of the day. We tried to
recall which way rivers move and then
I read that all rivers want to make their
ways into whatever seas are nearest,
and that some lakes, big as they are,
are in reality nothing more or less
than river bulges. The rivers collecting
and pooling onto themselves, really
navel-gazing into a large puddle.
I didn’t try to fact-check when I read;
I simply ran with the sentence. That
summer on the island off Maine, the
day or days went on with these ideas.
We tried to remember, I read, and
then we played a little game, trying to
say the same word at the same time.
It’s mostly south that rivers flow.
Our mouths opened and opened and
opened and eventually landed at tide.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes there are no words. A lake
is such when a river has flown where
the land has been higher on all sides.
Rarely is land perfectly flat. As such, an
inclination to southness. Always aiming
for the biggest basin—does all water wish
to contain salt? Merger is a process and
a practice. What distinguishes instinct
from pressure or pull? I forgot about
the rain, how the rain fits in, and the
underground aquifers. The water table is
landed liquid seeping up. Up and south.
Sometimes there are no words.

Some of us can be traced by how we
arrived—which way up or down. Some
of us don’t remember. Simply can’t.