Three Poems
Daria Turner
Unmoored.
Tell me, what do you think of when you think of an American?
Do you think of cowboys? Do you think of blonde women?
Do you see a dad with a beer-gut flipping burgers on a charcoal grill?
What about America?
Do you think of red, white, and blue flags against the blue sky?
Do you think of landscapes? Canyons, rocky rivers,
or snow-capped mountains, prairies, or city streets?
I only ask because when Yvonne described her new coworker
she said, “She looks American, she’s White.”
Where does that place me? I wondered,
if I am not White but American.
Who does that make me? I pondered,
if I am African American, but not African.
But surely, I am more American than you— I’m sorry, it’s not a competition, but
my ancestral story is erased, lost in history, time, and space.
When I was 7, Ms. Anderson asked us to draw our ancestral country’s flag.
My parents had no clue where their people came from,
other than New Jersey, other than Alabama.
So, I choose Namibia because I liked the way it sounded
and I liked the flag, a sun in the upper left corner.
In high school, on cultural heritage day,
you’d bring in your perogies, bratwursts, soda breads, and cannolis.
I’d bring in some money from Algeria that my dad got on a business trip.
None of these places I am from,
I wouldn’t have an inkling until 2021,
plastic tubes and saliva providing answers to generations of questions.
But even so— it would seem strange to appropriate the culture of a country I know nothing of.
But even so— when I think of homeland, I think of home,
the two-story house on the corner, the one with cherry blossoms and the giant red oak tree.
So, when they ask me where I’m from,
I hesitate, I sigh, I roll my eyes, I wonder why
it even matters.
I am from here, a small town in New Jersey.
My Bedroom of Movies
Little blond boy on the tv screen
vowing never to grow up.
Me, only 5, not knowing yet
what that would mean:
being frozen, a child forever.
Acorns, stars, and fairy dust.
Small black electric box projecting stylized images.
So many summer afternoons spent
gazing and dreaming,
conjuring magnificent lives,
making my own, and the life I have now,
all the lesser.
Hearing orchestral sounds that, to this day,
make me teary-eyed and wistful.
Nostalgic for a feeling—but never a memory.
Forever longing for a moment,
that most likely never happened.
No, I would not like to go back,
brown eyes wide and at the mercy of
those ghost-like strangers on the screen.
No, I would not like to be so ignorant.
Yet, I still long for some kind of delicate reverence,
a time when time settled still.
White particles in the air danced to the ground, so softly.
Breathing, lungs full of fairy dust and dreams,
and an entire future therein.
A Scene from Norma Jeane’s Vanity
tears fall down her pearly cheeks,
streak cakey lines of wet powder.
where is she?
each drop of salty water,
i gracefully swipe away with the brush.
every smoky smudge,
never there.
i continue in this fashion as her sobs turn
into deep sighs.
oh, she’s on her way.
i continue in this manner until
the lipstick is painted,
wide and scarlet.
the eyeliner drawn,
a thin line of kohl.
the blush powdered,
two soft rounds of baby pink.
the lashes glued down,
wispy and black.
her hands embrace at her breasts
she murmurs, in fervent prayer,
“Don’t abandon me!”
her eyes slowly retreat from
the surface of the wooden vanity
and trace a line up to the mirror.
locking blue-eyes,
the smile appears
and she is here.
Daria Turner graduated with the Class of 2023, an English major with a comparative literature minor. She’s from a small town in New Jersey and she spends most of her time either reading, listening to music, or writing.