Sign Inventory 1 Week 11

Self-Portrait as a Moment in 1963

Supper's late, and my mother sprawls

before the console, half-watching Gunsmoke,

Alabama History spread before her,

though school's almost out for summer

and the chicken's almost fried

to that perfect crisp. Then it's over,

credits stamped over final stills,

and the show gives way to news,

a minute of film from Birmingham,

not an hour south, where police

are turning dogs on kids as young

as she, spraying them with hoses

until they fall, the water she isn't watching

curling like smoke in the air.

My grandmother flicks the switch

and they're gone. They eat

in quiet, each cutting a breast

or thigh into steam, forking

beans or macaroni until

the plates' blank faces shine again.

This is years before

she'd meet my father, before

I'd come to that table,

that food, that room.

There's a silence here

I want to scratch away,

so I can see what's underneath,
what they don't recall.

I want to turn someone's head,

my grandfather's maybe, or my mother's,

back toward the TV,

where the tube's still fading,

the ghost of that scene

on the edge of that room.

I want someone there to see

and remember, so I can leave

and go back into the future,

not history. Not yet.

               Jake Adam York

Sign Inventory

-Beginning of the poem is female (“mother,” “grandmother”), then shifts in its center to predominantly male (“father,” “grandfather”). What might this mean, how might this function in this poem?

-The poem provides a steady movement in time (“late,” “minute,” “years,” “future,” “history”). How does this movement of time function?

-Why does the television receive so much attention in the piece? How might the importance of this technology function in this piece?

-Displays of finality or nothingness throughout (“[t]hen it’s over,” “[t]hey’re gone,” “blank faces,” “silence,” “don’t recall,” “fading,” “ghost” but a fight occurring in the end lines against finality, “not history. Not yet.”