What Do You See in My Face?
Jeanine Walker | Poetry
I don’t know the names of trees.
I never know. I’ve never known.
It’s a burden to know
and another burden to not know.
He says don’t attack her.
It’s a dog he’s speaking to, about me.
Another person stares. I have no being
here. I am old. Are they checking
to see if I look old? “Perfect,”
he says on the video call,
touching index finger to thumb
in that universal gesture. “I’m sure.”
I go home. The air softens.
Someone stares at me here: me:
it’s my face. I continue to be
bewildered. I continue to sing.
Jeanine Walker is the author of The Two of Them Might Outlast Me (Groundhog Poetry Press, 2022). She has received writing fellowships from Artist Trust, The Jack Straw Cultural Center, Wonju, UNESCO City of Literature, and Inprint. Her poems, essays, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Bennington Review, Denver Quarterly, HAD, New Ohio Review, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. A poet with a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston, Jeanine is a long-time poetry teacher in Seattle and has recently taught English at Kangwon National University in Chuncheon, South Korea.