• America's Flowers

    To the beautiful Adsila, the farm, and my great-grandfather

    For the Native American
        
    1513 (Watch)

    I. 
    Divorced from bone, we are left
    with snow tooth, jowl. The wind
    chews stars through our buckskin. 
     
    Be good family. Feed your new brothers. 
    We shucked the corn we saved for ourselves. 
    Cherry pits, maize beer, girl 

    harvests, passing through narrow hips 
    to rough hands: gifts for God.   
    What we have left: our fingers. 
     
    Hágoónee, consolation spread thin, 
    melted marmalade over cornbread: 
    all will be okay. 

    II. 
    Come spring & the prairie is white, 
    leeched ritual. Our friends: planted 
    north of the pueblos for five moons now, 

    in the dirt of blind deities. Children
    of orchid & mud, eyes alit
    with melted gold, teeth gleaming:

    glasses of mint julep at sunfall.
    That was the spring Adsila saw a gun fire,
    the spring of sick willows, of burning

    dewberry fields 
    & charcoal leaves, 
    upturned. 

    III. 
    Olive husk, soldier            in the grass. Every sun, 
    a new bride grows               at His feet:
    strands of golden hair              held by singed rope.

    Beyond the wrinkled bark        ships burn 
    into the asphalt horizon        stretching
    for carob feathers,          red skin.

    We watch them         from this maple trunk, 
    our backs wilting          like old flowers—it was here 
    bloodlines converged,        where Adsila came 

    to meet God, where our eyes          eclipsed her marriage.   
      
    From the Field

    1797 (Listen)

    In prairie dresses,
    we plant ourselves in corn meadow:

    five-petaled fingers 
    holding raw mulch

    to help our fathers
    sow and seed diamonds

    to bear from the earth
    daughters, flowers, and bread.

    Swollen hands, buried 
    silver knives under loam 

    and infirmity, by the feet 
    of the chokecherry tree.
     
    By the Railroad

    1864 (Drink)

    117 Chinese boys.

    Weedy, half-baked men. Egg-yolk 
    bruises. Butterfly ribs, flat faces. They walked away 
    from eastern dreamsongs into red America 
    to grow oil-black dahlias—

    stems thick as wrists. They make dough 
    from dried blood.

    Here at the railroad, shards of sunlight 
    cut their ivory monolids 
    until the crescents brown. These Laotian boys, 
    they work alongside countrymen—

    their breath pongs of chicken stir-fry & fermented 
    rice cauterized in dialect. 

    A Western knife minces their Cantonese, tongues
    laden with pork fat, fried, then burned
    into metal. English whole, 
    elusive. Miners, Orientals, Aliens, all Crocker’s pets—

    orange peels painted on china.

    Tracks chiseled into bone 
    beyond the marshland, men built 
    the spine. They labor to one day ride it: 
    Work every day until you can start living.     
    I hear it often—

    the throats’ filigree
    suspended in the tap, on the lips 
    of our dixie cups, 
    before we swallow.
     
    Katherine Vandermel

    Katherine Vandermel
    Grade: 11

    Bergen County Academies
    Hackensack, NJ 07601

    Educator(s): Richard Weems

    Awards: Poetry
    Best in Grade Award, 2020
    Gold Medal, 2020

    Questions or comments about this work? Contact us!
    https://ors.artandwriting.org/media/493737
    Ok, done! Go forth, share the link,
    and spread the word!
    Note: To paste the link:
    • on a Mac: Cmd + V
    • on a PC: Ctrl + V
    Copying to clipboard failed. Please try do it manually:
    https://ors.artandwriting.org/media/493737

    • Listen to Katherine discuss this work.

      America’s flowers.m4a