Lines Composed at 34 North Park Street, on Certain Memories of My White Grandmother Who Loved Me and Hated Black People Like Myself. July 15, 2017 by Shane McCrae

Lines Composed at 34 North Park Street, on Certain Memories of My White Grandmother Who Loved Me and Hated Black People Like Myself. July 15, 2017

 

America I was I think I was

Seven I think or anyway I prob-

ably was    nine    I anyway was nine

 

And riding in the back    seat of our tan

Datsun 210    which by the way Amer-

ica I can’t believe    Datsun is just

 

Gone    anyway   America I was

Riding in the back    seat we were we my grand-

mother and I were passing the it must

 

Have been a mall    but I have tried    and can’t

Remember any malls in Austin at

The time America but do I really

 

Remember Austin really    I remember

This thing that happened    once when I was passing

A mall in Austin so    the mall so Austin

 

But then and when America will my

Grandmother be    my memories of her her-

self be replaced by memories of just

 

Her presence near    important or unusu-

al things that happened does that happen will

That happen we     America we were

 

Anyway passing     on a city street

But next to it the    mall and actually

I might have been in the front seat actually

 

And maybe it was    winter all the windows

Were rolled up maybe or at least the one

Right next to me    in the front seat Amer-

 

ica when for    no reason I could see the

Window exploded    glass swallowed me    the way

A cloudburst swallows a car    glass and a

 

Great stillness    flying glass and stillness both

Together    then the stillness left    and I

Jumped either over my    seat or between

 

The seats    into the back America

Or neither    here I might just be remem-

bering the one real accident I’ve ever

 

Been in I was    a child still maybe seven

Or nine and we    were in an intersec-

tion hit    and I for sure jumped then my grand-

mother and I again already my

Memories of the Datsun breaking seem

More solid than my memories of her

 

America    but I remember her

Mobile home filling up with trash    until

She couldn’t walk through any room    and still she

 

Walked through her rooms she walked the way I walk

Through stores    suspicious    and aloof watched e-

ven by the products I consume consumed

 

By you America    O cloud of glass