The Yellow House. Sarah M. Broom
of Space by Gaston Bachelard, translated by Maria Jolas, copyright © 1958 by Presses Universitaires de France, translation copyright © 1964 by Penguin Random House LLC. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved; Tracy K. Smith, excerpt from “Ash” from Wade in the Water. Originally from the New Yorker (November 23, 2015). Copyright © 2015, 2018 by Tracy K. Smith. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, graywolfpress.org; LeAlan Jones, Public Domain; Yance Ford, excerpt from the film Strong Island; John Milton, excerpt from Paradise Lost. Public Domain; Unified New Orleans Plan, Public Domain; Lil Wayne, excerpt from AllHipHop.com interview in early 2006; Adrienne Rich, the lines from “Diving into the Wreck”. Copyright © 2016 by the Adrienne Rich Literary Trust. Copyright © 1973 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., from Collected Poems: 1950—2012 by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc; Joan Didion, excerpt from “In the Islands” from The White Album by Joan Didion. Copyright © 1979 by Joan Didion. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Sam Hamill, excerpt from Narrow Road to the Interior: And Other Writings (Shambhala Classics).
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Published simultaneously in Canada
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eISBN 978-0-8021-4654-0
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
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for three women, with love and heart
Amelia “Lolo”
Auntie Elaine
Ivory Mae
CONTENTS
Praise for The Yellow House
MAP 1
MOVEMENT I The World Before Me
I. Amelia “Lolo”
II. Joseph, Elaine, and Ivory
III. Webb
IV. Simon Broom
V. Short End, Long Street
VI. Betsy
VII. The Crown
MOVEMENT II The Grieving House
I. Hiding Places
II. Origins
III. The Grieving House
IV. Map of My World
V. Four Eyes
VI. Elsewheres
VII. Interiors
VIII. Tongues
IX. Distances
X. 1999
Movement III Water
I. Run
II. Survive
III. Settle
IV. Bury
V. Trace
VI. Erase
VII. Forget
VIII. Perdido
Movement IV Do You Know What It Means? Investigations
I. Sojourner
II. Saint Rose
III. Saint Peter
IV. McCoy
V. Photo Op
VI. Investigations
VII. Phantoms
VIII. Dark Night, Wilson
IX. Cutting Grass
After
Acknowledgments
Photographs
draw me a map of what you see
then I will draw a map of what you never see
and guess me whose map will be bigger than whose?
Kei Miller
To learn how to read any map is to be indoctrinated into that mapmaker’s culture.
Peter Turchi
From high up, fifteen thousand feet above, where the aerial photographs are taken, 4121 Wilson Avenue, the address I know best, is a minuscule point, a scab of green. In satellite images shot from higher still, my former street dissolves into the toe of Louisiana’s boot. From this vantage point, our address, now mite size, would appear to sit in the Gulf of Mexico. Distance lends perspective, but it can also shade, misinterpret. From these great heights, my brother Carl would not be