Myth

“Photograph: Ice Storm, 1971” by Natasha Trethewey (2006)

In this poem, which also appears in Native Guard ’s first section, Trethewey tries to find the reasons for what will happen to her mother’s life in a photograph in her life before her marriage to Grimmette. The photograph is of the small family on the “first morning” (Line 11) of an ice storm. It shows what is visible, even identifying “names, the date, the event” (Line 14). However, the photograph doesn’t fully capture “what’s inside” (Line 15) her mother, “a woman, suffering, / made luminous by the camera’s eye” (Lines 2-3). It doesn’t predict her “stepfather’s fist” (Line 15). Again, like “Myth,” the poem is an attempt to capture and to make sense of why subsequent events unfolded as they did, and grapples with memory and loss.

“After Your Death” by Natasha Trethewey (2006)

This poem was collected into Monument (2018), but it first appeared in Native Guard as the poem directly preceding “Myth.” In it, Trethewey cleans her dead mother’s home, and later, outside, picks a “ripe fig loose from its stem” (Line 6). However, it is “being taken from the inside: // a swarm of insects hollowing it” (Lines 9-10).