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Brick in the Desert A Tribute to My Poet Ancestor Before I knew of you, I tumbled through your scrapbook, a clutch of photos taken in the north of Africa. Mud colored mayhem angled through your lens, pictures of a war beyond the memory of me, your great niece on a wetter continent. You found a black and white way with light and glossy-lean Arabic tiles. Sultan-lush gardens and delicate teacakes made me wonder who let in a clerk from the US Army. From behind carefully mounted photos fell a poem folded into fours. A careful poem of foreign shores and yearning. When you came back, you had already yellowed to old desert sand and the faded you faded through what was left of an old way of living. It was a secret of sorts that you checked yourself into the hospital in Denver. I had to excavate, in my adolescent way, to find the story of your willful end. They did not care to linger in the loss, so I made you mine, with your lonely lines and scrapbook of careful moments; my poet ancestor who fanned the flickering spirit in me. |
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