Dear Memphis,
Once, my grandma’s mailbox toppled
in straight-line winds
that tipped an old oak
onto her roof—
burst the tomato pots
she’d lugged up the ladder.
From time to time, the metal caved
at the hands
of someone’s baseball bat.
Her knobby wrist
used to dash a ballpoint
across a legal pad—
slim pen loops
to distances she’d mapped
on the butcher paper family tree.
We used to turn old envelopes
inside-out. We unstuck
seams, smoothed
creases. She pressed
strips of tape
against the folds I held
with both hands, not a thought
to anyone’s answer.
I’ll never know
whose cursive burned
when we found
metal shards in her azalea,
a half-shell of duct tape
still intact from the homemade bomb.
Memphis, you know
what can tear through my words
when I send them
out into this weather.
Rachel Edelman is a Jewish poet who writes into diasporic living. They are the author of the debut collection of poems Dear Memphis (River River Books, 2024), which offers a direct address to the city where they grew up. She teaches high school Language Arts in Seattle Public Schools, where embodiment and care root her personal, poetic, and pedagogical practice.
Header photo by Suzi Wilson, courtesy Pixabay. Photo of Rachel Edelman by Gabrielle Bates.
