Photo by Vinson Pham
Westward Expansion
Rita Rouvalis Chapman
Despite popular perception
it does not span the Mississippi
like the edge of a new quarter–
no, it’s a giant tooth grinning back
from the western bank
throwing its shadow
across the cobblestones,
the curve of a covered wagon
with a whole future under its dome,
the hull of the grain barges
that stand dumbly at their docks,
a breast reaching out to the sun,
the national monument
with the fewest facts attached to it
and maybe that’s about right, the way
it refuses history and its desire
to gallop and burn,
how it chooses instead to wave blankly,
a dull film of time
and flood lines on its hips.
Still, it hasn’t been here as long
as people think. Neither have I.
Divorce and westward expansion
slide the facts from me, too:
wife, teacher, tender of family.
Now, invisible, that wing of
history blazes over my shoulder,
it insists on calling in other parabolas:
the river coming down, birds in flight,
a rainbow with every rain, all fleeting,
all calculating nothing but a view.
Rita Rouvalis Chapman
Despite popular perception
it does not span the Mississippi
like the edge of a new quarter–
no, it’s a giant tooth grinning back
from the western bank
throwing its shadow
across the cobblestones,
the curve of a covered wagon
with a whole future under its dome,
the hull of the grain barges
that stand dumbly at their docks,
a breast reaching out to the sun,
the national monument
with the fewest facts attached to it
and maybe that’s about right, the way
it refuses history and its desire
to gallop and burn,
how it chooses instead to wave blankly,
a dull film of time
and flood lines on its hips.
Still, it hasn’t been here as long
as people think. Neither have I.
Divorce and westward expansion
slide the facts from me, too:
wife, teacher, tender of family.
Now, invisible, that wing of
history blazes over my shoulder,
it insists on calling in other parabolas:
the river coming down, birds in flight,
a rainbow with every rain, all fleeting,
all calculating nothing but a view.