What is the Grass? by Lee Ann Brown

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend October 31, 2014   What is the Grass?   Lee Ann Brown

The child asks, bringing it to me in handfuls. We stop at the Walt Whitman Service Area— No sign of Him save some “Democratic Vistas” & “Drum Taps” on a plaque near the Micky D’s   Let’s go find the grass I say to my two-year-old beauty and We pick one blade from the median Then back we go in the forever car   Hours later, pulling into Richmond She, half awake in my arms mumbles   Let’s go find the grass            Copyright © 2014 by Lee Ann Brown. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “This snapshot poem’s title is taken from Whitman’s ever-generative ‘Song of Myself,’ when a child asks a question that grows into Leaves of Grass. My poem answers from the middle of the mother-daughter dyad, touching on a new human’s relation to memory, dream and the shared hunger for a lullaby of green amidst the cloned cookie-cutter rest stops of modern America.” —Lee Ann Brown   Lee Ann Brown is the author of Crowns of Charlotte (Carolina Wren Press, 2013). She teaches at St. John’s University and lives in New York City. Most Recent Book by Brown   Crowns of Charlotte (Carolina Wren Press, 2013) "My Childhood" by Matthew Zapruder "Untitled [The child thought it strange]" by Richard Meier "From the Lives of My Friends" by Michael Dickman Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038