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My Great Grandmother Jensinde's Black Hymnal and the Truth
By Mark Wekander
I inherit the spirit's
postcard, her hymnal,
a window of a demolished house.
In the postcard, not the hymnal,
the widow sits dressed, crumpled–
as if age took her
in its fist like paper and she
never can unbend, unwrinkle again–
before the tar paper shack
on Montana's eastern plains,
homesteading. My grandmother,
stands, 1913, white apron, to appraise
the camera that takes the postcard.
The house and two women are separate,
like billboards on a flat road.
A lizard's stretched S
in the sidewalk's cement tablet
is a death suit, fossil.
The final stone punctuation,
almost a question mark,
inscribed on a tomb.
At 40 Jensinde gave birth to Inga.
40 years before Inga's death,
Jensinde died at 93—a 53
year intersection, the postcard,
a slice so thin it's meaningless.
The shack became the chicken coop.
Jenny and Karl's became a kitchen.
A house staggered into shape.
Was the lizard stuck for a second?
Did it fall in wet cement
and fossilize, or did someone pick
it up and leave its impression?
Jensinde's dead when they photograph
the house. The hired girl
leans at the porch's far end
as if she caressed the ship's mast.
The roses in the dust
were painted green and red.
The windmill "was painted in."
Now I see the crude lines,
like the lizard's bodyprint.
The brush strokes are late Picasso.
The camera's moment is suspect.
There's no proof of anything.
A racing car turns the billboards
on the Great Plains like pages.
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