Child in Memphis
Dorothea Lange photograph, 1938
Adam Tavel
The shack porch laced
with bean vines wears
the blaze of June.
This black and white
America
is knotted string
a mother’s hands
have tied across
the absence of
a rail, from boards
to roof, so shoots
can trellis on
the air. The girl
who squints into
the whitened glare
behind the white
photographer
must know her door
hangs open for
the flies, mule dust,
and present tense
of sharecropping.
Maybe she dreams
the sound it makes,
a camera smashed
to glimmered shards
beneath her heels.
She’s nine or ten.
Her limbs too lean
from overwork,
her knotted hands
rest on her smock.
Or so I guess.
I cannot know
them there, those wrists
that taper to
small knuckles clenched,
obscured by blooms.
Adam Tavel is the author of four books of poetry, including the forthcoming Sum Ledger (Measure Press, 2021). His most recent collection, Catafalque, won the Richard Wilbur Award (University of Evansville Press, 2018). His recent poems appear, or will soon appear, in The Georgia Review, The Gettysburg Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Ninth Letter, The Los Angeles Review, Midwest Quarterly, 32 Poems, and Tampa Review, among others. You can find him online at adamtavel.com.