I speak one language. I want another
English degree. Since childhood I haven’t
settled anywhere due to poetry, in pursuit
of unread books unpacked again, stacked in
corners. Furniture left on a curb in the rain.
When Grandpa was young, he says, his father
sold their regalia so Esther could attend
secretary school. They lived in South Dakota.
Dakota, we call ourselves. South, positioning
one state below another, as I position myself
lifting a fringed shirt over my head, or in
a life typing what other people say. Next
paragraph.
Research interests, poetic lineage.
In the trunk of my car, a mildewed coat,
powder-green, for I live in a state with
damp air, where events begin with land
acknowledgements. That air interests me,
wetter than gray, and the austere silence
after thanking Indians broadly, as if none
were present. Fleeing a famine, he says,
they found here a one-room shack. And I,
seeking poetry, have found myself under
cheap bulbs, eschewing abstract words,
like poetry, for concrete ones, like poem.
Now a detail to pull the reader in,
teen me walking home in a red cardigan
stitched with the school crest, Soli Deo
Gloria on a banner, sleeves unraveling.
Life felt discretely mine and art, like love,
something perfect to be made in the future.
It interests me where things end up. Esther
was a typist for the Agency. Books become
Texts; Family becomes Provenance. I find
online, glass-cased, Yankton Dakota Chief’s
Outer Dress, Provenance Unknown, draped on
a suggestion of human. I have, concretely.
My face in the mirror, settled light on itself.
Another poem opening with a first-person
declaration. I speak one language. I want
another English degree. In my car, that coat
I’ve left for months—how could I forget
to step into his house, Dakota land,
a piece the size of a placard. He rises from
a recliner—Oh, it’s going along—squeezes my
hands, asks where I’m moving, never why.
To have lived through so many omissions.
To be a sleeve, no arm inside. Yet I’ve
worked hard for this 4.0 in concrete details,
e.g. he stands in his suspenders and pilled
polyester gray pants, eyes spotted with dark
pools I peer into and through to . . .
Did you like that? Did I please you? Do my
concerns reveal a clear thematic line? And
what do you think of my future? Is it bright?
Brain-bright like whip-smart or white-bright
proliferating sun, ray here, ray there, jagged
glare outside the glass case inside of which
I’m squinting, spores coating the surface of
my tongue and in the hollow of my mouth
I finally
Erin Marie Lynch is the author of Removal Acts, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in October 2023. Her writing appears in Poetry Magazine, New England Review, Best New Poets, and other publications. She lives in Los Angeles.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Statement of Purpose.
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