What flag will fly for me / When I die?
—Langston Hughes
From a distance, my flag
and star could be you. I could be.
If I weren’t, my body—the place
would still have need of it. No
Romanesque without me. I am.
I am. And the price of my being:
no monuments built me. None
save those cradled in crabgrass,
left for chicory. No monuments
but the air breathed. The history
of arches and burning
hearts. The history of false teeth
and matches. No monument
but the knowledge gained in overrun
gardens: yellow-ringed snakes
and plumage of undiscovered
birds. But the topography
of mountains we have yet
to scale (looming forever
in the haze).
My body, your body—
all our lives we have known
each other. Your arms clung
to porch columns. Mine painted
the fence in whitewash. Mine stood by
the gate and held it, every morning, open.
You saw me once. You do not see me.
My talk to you comes out a backward
cacophony, the chattering of crows
in the field’s distant sycamore.
You do not see me. You do not
see me. No monument
you’d ever recognize. A flutter.
A spring hinge. A flush
of violet above tough stalk.
A line of char in the soil.
A catch, in your lungs,
of cold air. I am. I could be.
from Ghost, like a PlaceFind more by Iain Haley Pollock at the library
Copyright © 2018 Iain Haley Pollock
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.