Chitra Ganesh, How to Assemble a Flying Car (detail), 2018, linocut on tan BFK Rives. Courtesy of the artist & Durham Press.
15 1/2
When
you’re done here,
says the woman,
not recognizing
her new neighbor cutting
his own grass.
An echo of, from the kitchen,
my aunt, who yelled, Jack!
Why don’t you get that
nigger to come here
and mow
the lawn?
And later,
an ebony-skinned man came
in a khaki cap, removed
at her front door.
A yankee from DC, I watched
as if I could discern the cause.
All progress, un–
transformed
as the goldfinch when young,
dun–
colored, in early spring. At 15 1/2 I am sure
I can get
to the bottom
of this. Tranquility—Blood
that connects. The finch clings
to feed—
Youth! Restless!
Relentless—On towering stalks
that threaten, sway.
My aunt, an old-school
Alabaman, laughs and jokes,
offers the man
sweet tea
the granules soft now, melted away
—A blur, a blur
of Ours
were well-treated, and
Blessed to die before
his son, from river delivered
to clammy ground.
The finch is willing, will
consume
even the spiniest
seeds. And only
by this, appears,
in fall—
Yellow, astonishing
—Neon shock
—Not new, just
unthinkable—
This one
who is not by past, but
by future, made.
Ailish Hopper’s chapbook, Bird in the Head, was selected by Jean Valentine for the 2005 Center for Book Arts prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary, AGNI, Ploughshares, Poetry, Tidal Basin Review, and elsewhere. She has received grants and fellowships from the Baltimore Commission for the Arts and Humanities, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. She lives in Baltimore and teaches at Goucher College. (updated 10/2011)