ENCW 101 Spring 2019

We can’t remember her name, but we remember where
we buried her. In a blanket the color of a sky that refuses birds.

The illiterate owls interrogate us from the trees, and we answer,
We don’t know. Maybe we named her Dolores, for our grandmother,

meaning sadness, meaning the mild kisses of a priest.
Maybe we called her Ruth, after the missionary who gave us

a rifle and counterfeit wine. We blindfolded our sister and tied
her hands because she groped the fence looking for the rabid fox

we nailed to a post. Katydids sang with insistent summer urge
and the cavalier moon grew more slender. In the coyote hour,

we offered benedictions for a child we may have named Aja,
meaning unborn, meaning the stillness that entered us,

which is the stillness inside the burnt piano, which is also
the woman we untie, who is the mother of stillness.”

This poem is an elegy by Traci Brimhall.

The poem “Stillborn Elegy” by Traci Brimhall is one of the most powerful poems I have ever read. It starts off so strongly:

We can’t remember her name, but we remember where

we buried her. In a blanket the color of a sky that refuses birds.”

Maybe we named her Dolores, for our grandmother”

Maybe we called her Ruth, after the missionary who gave us

a rifle and counterfeit wine”

a child we may have named Aja”