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Jessica McClure, After the Well

Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers is a queer poet and the author of BAD CELL (Acre Books, 2027); The Tilt Torn Away from the Seasons (Acre Books, 2020); and Chord Box (University of Arkansas Press, 2013). An assistant professor of creative writing at Oberlin College, Rogers lives in Oberlin, Ohio.

About Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers

Themes

About this Poem

“Jessica McClure, often called ‘Baby Jessica,’ was the eighteen-month-old child who became famous in 1987 when she fell down an old well in Texas. Her fifty-eight-hour rescue was widely televised. I wrote this poem based on a morning show interview with Jessica in her early adulthood. After my son was born, I also began to wonder about the strange ways in which early events might shape our lives even as we can’t remember them. As a parent, I also have to live with this hard truth: There’s only so much one can do to protect their children from harm. This poem is from my forthcoming poetry collection, BAD CELL, which examines both parenting and the idea of queer inheritance.”
—Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers

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Abandoned Block Factory, Arkansas

All that is left
unaccounted for:
elegance married
to rust. On the roof, rain
dwelling in the corrugations.
Some slats vanished
altogether, a blankness
giving way to sky. But the eaves
hold in perfect vertices,
refuse to abandon
their beauty, hard-earned.
High on the yellow silo,
the conveyor’s lattice
is as finely wrought
as a string instrument’s
struts and braces: precision
in every coordinate
and all across the godlike slant
from tower to the ground.
There would be no time at all
if not for moss swelling

Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers

2017

Poems

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Jessica McClure, After the Well

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