Sign Inventory, Week 3

Facing It
-Yusef Komunyakaa

*The speaker states being made of various materials: “I’m stone,” “I’m flesh,” “I’m a window.”

*The poem repeatedly notes black and white distinctions: My black face fades, black granite, the booby trap’s white flesh, a white vet’s image floats, his pale eyes, in the black mirror.

*The speaker instills in the stone wall the ability to own, he personifies the wall with the ability to possess him: “I turn this way--the wall lets me go.

*The speaker continually mentions being part of the wall or inside it: My black face fades, hiding inside the black granite, the stone lets me go, the names stay on the wall, I half-expect to find my own [name] in letters, he’s lost his left arm inside the wall, etc.

*The poem is scattered with specifics: the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 58,002 names, Andrew Johnson; and more general descriptions: a plane in the sky, a woman’s blouse, the sky.

*The poems features numerous negations: “No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair,” “He’s lost his right arm,” “a woman’s trying to erase names,” “dammit,” “No tears,” “I said I wouldn’t”.

*The speaker makes sure to assign race to himself and the vet with the lost arm, even the bird is red, but the woman and Andrew Johnson remain raceless.

*Vision is opaque: my clouded reflection, white flash, a white vet’s image floats, depending on the light to make a difference, my own in letters like smoke.

*The poems has a series of short, direct, declarative sentences: I’m stone, I’m flesh, The sky, A plane in the sky--in amongst longer, more narrative sentences.

*There are numerous images of flight or things that can take flight: eyes me like a bird of prey, letters like smoke, red bird’s wings, a plane.