Whiteacre
the trees all planted in the same month after the same fire
each thick around
as a man’s wrist
meticulously spaced grids cutting the sunshine
into panels into planks
and crossbeams of light
an incandescent architecture that is the home that was
promised you
the promise of your new
purified body
your body rendered glasslike by fire now open to the light
slicing through you
through the glass
bones of your hands as you lift the light free of its verticals
carry it blazing
through your irradiated life
Copyright © 2015 by Monica Youn. Used with permission of the author.
“This poem is part of the title series in my forthcoming book Blackacre (Graywolf Press, 2016). In Anglo-American law, ‘blackacre’ is a standard placeholder term used to denote a hypothetical estate or piece of property, much as the term ‘John Doe’ would be used to indicate a hypothetical or anonymous individual. For example, in a legal hypothetical, one might say that John Doe wishes to bequeath his property blackacre to his sister Jane Roe. Similarly, one can designate other hypothetical properties whiteacre, greenacre, brownacre, etc.”
—Monica Youn
Monica Youn
Monica Youn grew up in Houston, Texas. She received a BA from Princeton University, a JD from Yale Law School, and an MPhil from the University of Oxford, where she was a Rhodes Scholar.