Alluvial
1.
What I have is a map of yellow, blue and red squares
on streets named Lafayette, Rivard, Hastings.
What I know is that my father’s grandmother lived here,
not far from the Eastern Market, not far from her cousins.
If you missed the vendor’s cart, you could walk from west
to east for your cabbage. Her house, her father’s house,
her sister’s house, her cousin’s house—these houses
are a map now. A square of red or yellow or blue.
2.
Her home is a freeway now, my father’s grandmother’s
house. Her sister’s house, her cousin’s house—
all freeway now too.
Black Bottom it’s called, this neighborhood of rich
marsh soil buried under pavement and freeway.
3.
My father’s grandmother made and sold hats
in the front parlor of the house that is now a freeway,
but it’s her father’s name in the business directory.
4.
Alluvial:
The Detroit River bed holds old wooden ships, cars,
firearms. Hattie’s feathered hats with velvet trim
are down there, too, fossilized in the murky clay.
Suzy Harris was born and raised in Indiana and has lived her adult life in Portland, Oregon. This year she published a chapbook called Listening in the Dark (The Poetry Box) about her journey through hearing loss and learning to hear again with cochlear implants.
