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Yellow Dress

By Amy Beeder b. 1964 Amy Beeder

Port-au-Prince

Girl on a heap of street sweepings high

as a pyre, laid on snarled wire & dented rim.

Girl set down among the wrung-out hides.

A girl who was coming from church. It is late

Sunday afternoon. Was it a seizure? Is it

destiny or bad luck we should fear? Weak heart

or swerving taxi? In Tet Bef by the dirty ocean

thousands crush past her without pausing

at the shrine of her spayed limbs; brilliance

like the flesh of lilies sprouting from the pummeled cane.

Is it possible to be lighthearted, hours later?

Days? To forget the yellow dress?

I am waiting for her mother to find her, still

wearing one white spotless glove (where is the other?),

my idle taxi level with her unbruised arm,

her fingers just curling like petals of a fallen flower

and how did it end? Let someone have gathered her up

before the stars assembled coldly overhead:

her dress brighter than gold, crocus, the yolk of an egg

her face covered like the bride of a god; let them

have found her & borne her though the traffic's clamor

veiled with a stranger's handkerchief.

Source: Poetry (December 2004).

Biography

A former human rights observer in Haiti and Suriname, and a high school teacher in West Africa, Amy Beeder balances an ear for meter with an often ominous tone, creating a musical, at times mythical, exploration of how we construct beauty and strangeness. Critic Sandra Gilbert declared that Burn the Field (2006) “constitutes an impressive debut for a writer who reveres the heft, texture, and taste of words.”

Writing in the . . .

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