After Oprah
As a kid the only black woman
in my life was my fourth-grade teacher—
I remember her not because she was black
but mostly because of her copper-colored
bob that never changed, as if a piece
of bronze had been chiseled onto her
head and neither I nor my classmates
could prove it was a wig, but we knew it was
too perfect to be real. Then you came in-
to my home—but not the way someone
came in one afternoon while we were away
grocery shopping, leaving the side door wide
open releasing my white-winged parakeet,
my mother’s jewelry and our television,
gone. And for years I watched you go
from analog into digital; you were
the modicum of motherhood I encountered
daily while my mother stood on a production
line mouthing prayers for prosperity
and health in a room of air
compressors. You’re a super galactic
hologram—scattered light reconstructed
through the dark matter, ever-shrinking
pixels—shifting the cosmology
of the world with gigs of Gayle, and
revolutionary road trips. And now
will you quietly fade out into the space-
time continuum where not even my imagination
will find you? Your last broadcast
like the final song of our beloved parakeet
as it flew past the leafless trees toward
the vast dome of heaven.
Copyright Credit: Ruben Quesada, "After Oprah" from Next Extinct Mammal. Copyright © 2011 by Ruben Quesada. Reprinted by permission of Greenhouse Review Press.