Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren
The Civil War Photographer
In my portrait studio, I place each
soldier’s head between a metal vise
to keep him still. But things move
too fast in the field.
I photograph what remains
after the fighting’s done: not smoke
but the cold cannon, the burnt-
out mill, the singed hills. Branches
curling inward like a man’s nails
grown wild. I wish I had the speed
& color to capture
the ceasefire, when soldiers
on both sides go blackberrying.
The chaos of their arms
plunging into the gaps,
skin brambling to a blackish-red,
mouths bursting from juice & thorns.
How they hurt for what sustains them.
Lenox Avenue
after Romare Bearden's The Block
Footsteps pause & pace overhead: lunga,
andante, while something simmers
in someone else's kitchen—an aroma of split onion
with crushed garlic cackling in lard.
Sound & scent are trade winds
you catch in your mind. Soon
you arrive at the stove in North Carolina
where your great-grandmother is laughing
at a story back before
it became your grandfather's,
then your mother's, repeated like rows of seed
in loam. You're as much cecil, knotted with red
clay & sweet potato root, as you are these paved
asphalt streets. From your friend's Harlem balcony,
cars above & below the broken yellow line
push forward, as if cursive letters
on penmanship paper
where you first learned
to sign your name. Where you let it fill
the whole page. On your studio table
one paper sun rises
over a sea voyage two kids
watch on TV—their backs to the window
through which the other sun warms rooftops
up & down the block. Both skies
are the lime-tinged indigo of Southern
doorframes that neither flies nor haints
are said to cross. Both suns'
edges are cut smooth, their texture
crinkled like bed sheets
or sheet music or your wife's eyes when she laughs
to herself. Outside: the moon
--
Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren is an MFA candidate in Poetry and Literary Translation at Columbia University and the Dispatches editor for Words Without Borders. Her honors include an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Hopwood Award, and a 2013-2014 Fulbright Fellowship to Brazil; she was also a finalist for this year’s Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. You can find her work in literary journals including Narrative, Guernica, The Common, Two Lines, and BOMB.
andante, while something simmers
in someone else's kitchen—an aroma of split onion
with crushed garlic cackling in lard.
Sound & scent are trade winds
you catch in your mind. Soon
you arrive at the stove in North Carolina
where your great-grandmother is laughing
at a story back before
it became your grandfather's,
then your mother's, repeated like rows of seed
in loam. You're as much cecil, knotted with red
clay & sweet potato root, as you are these paved
asphalt streets. From your friend's Harlem balcony,
cars above & below the broken yellow line
push forward, as if cursive letters
on penmanship paper
where you first learned
to sign your name. Where you let it fill
the whole page. On your studio table
one paper sun rises
over a sea voyage two kids
watch on TV—their backs to the window
through which the other sun warms rooftops
up & down the block. Both skies
are the lime-tinged indigo of Southern
doorframes that neither flies nor haints
are said to cross. Both suns'
edges are cut smooth, their texture
crinkled like bed sheets
or sheet music or your wife's eyes when she laughs
to herself. Outside: the moon
--
Rachel Morgenstern-Clarren is an MFA candidate in Poetry and Literary Translation at Columbia University and the Dispatches editor for Words Without Borders. Her honors include an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Hopwood Award, and a 2013-2014 Fulbright Fellowship to Brazil; she was also a finalist for this year’s Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship. You can find her work in literary journals including Narrative, Guernica, The Common, Two Lines, and BOMB.