Sign Inventory, Post 10, Week 11

Self-Portrait as a Moment in 1963
Jake York

Supper's late, and my mother sprawls
before the console, half-watching Gunsmoke,

Alabama History spread before her,
though school's almost out for summer

and the chicken's almost fried
to that perfect crisp. Then it's over,

credits stamped over final stills,
and the show gives way to news,

a minute of film from Birmingham,
not an hour south, where police

are turning dogs on kids as young
as she, spraying them with hoses

until they fall, the water she isn't watching
curling like smoke in the air.

My grandmother flicks the switch
and they're gone. They eat

in quiet, each cutting a breast
or thigh into steam, forking

beans or macaroni until
the plates' blank faces shine again.

This is years before
she'd meet my father, before

I'd come to that table,
that food, that room.

There's a silence here
I want to scratch away

so I can see what's underneath,
what they don't recall.

I want to turn someone's head,
my grandfather's, maybe, or my mother's,

back toward the TV, where
the tube's still fading,

the ghost of that scene
on the edge of that room.

I want someone there to see
and remember, so I can leave

and go back into the future,
not history. Not yet.



-This poem uses the scene of the police spraying the kids with fire hoses to symbolize something bigger that the family isn't talking about (hence shutting off the TV). Once the television is off, though, there still remains the ghost of the image on the screen, just like whatever it is they're not saying stays in their heads.

-York uses the word "that" quite a bit in this piece. He uses it to bring specificity to the scene as well as to relate to the reader with general concepts. Specificity example: "the ghost of that scene / on the edge of that room." Generalization example: "and the chicken's almost fried / to that perfect crisp."

- It is interesting that he chose to call this a self-portrait, although he is not actually in the scene. He wants to be a part of it so that he can manipulate the details to get more out of it, but he can't. I would have to do much more research to offer an explanation for this, but I still thought it was worth bringing up.