A Permanent Absence

“The art of seeing and unseeing, stitching and unstitching the American psyche, opens wounds far deeper than the eye itself can ever manage,”

— Rachel Eliza Griffiths, in a 2015 Pen America article on the banning of Morrison’s novel, The Bluest Eye(1970)

Though she could not have planned or predicted it, on the mid-June day that saw the publication of Rachel Eliza Griffiths’s new poetry collection, Seeing the Body, all eyes were on Houston, TX, for the penultimate funeral service of a black man murdered while in police custody, where he was allegedly choked to death in the course of nearly nine minutes. The following night, a black father of four was shot in the back in a Wendy’s parking lot in Atlanta, GA, after a routine encounter escalated into a brief and ultimately fatal chase.

In that week that concluded with Juneteenth — emerged from the cobwebs of history to public consciousness as news channels and papers scrambled to convey the holidays’ significance — the above events, recorded and replayed incessantly in what Griffiths dubbed “trauma porn,” superseded what history would already regard as the troubled summer of 2020 on account of a global pandemic. The ensuing demonstrations sparked the most widespread protest movement in this country’s history — against racism and inequality, police misconduct, misogyny, and the often drowned voice of justice when it comes to black versus white crime.

Along the way, society surreptitiously “woke” as celebrities, corporations, states, and even governments vowed to address systemic racism and join the rallying cry of Black Lives Matter. A drugstore chain moved beauty products for black women from behind locked cabinets; a TV shopping franchise featured in its pre-Christmas merchandise a first-ever black Santa. Aunt Jemima its brands’ image based on the effigy of a former slave — was no longer, as overnight companies announced policy reforms and contributions in the name of social justice to black-owned business, causes, and institutions. Amidst the rage, for it was near universal rage that greeted the spectacle of George Floyd’s killing, confederate monuments crashed and burned at the behest of protestors of all ilk. And in one of the most symbolic testaments to hard-fought progress, a state that long held dear its confederate legacy — Mississippi — removed the confederate emblem on its flag, promising a new design with one caveat, however, incorporation of the words “In God We Trust” that are emblazoned on every US dollar.

Yet plans to feature abolitionist Harriet Tubman on the face of the $20 bill — the currency Floyd was said to have tendered in counterfeit — were postponed for no apparent reason, vaguely remaindered to a time of less unrest. The benign undoing of what had signaled one small, positive initiative on the path to black/white equity became but further evidence of impasse, of this fractious moment in America, and the untethered violence that expresses it to this day.

Though she could not have foreseen it, Griffiths’s “Seeing the Body,” that she described to fellow poet Jacki Lyden at the June 11 Center for Fiction video launch as “a space to stop and breathe and think about the world” — landed in the literary biosphere as Rev. Al Sharpton’s eulogy at a three-hour “home-going” for Floyd admonished listeners to not just see a crime — perpetrated by a police sergeant on a roadside in Minneapolis — but to see a body — specifically that of the victim under his oppressor’s hold, as it pleaded in vain for breath.

I did not ask Griffiths, whose demeanor at her many public readings is consistently gracious, humble even, despite her literary prowess, if she minded that her fifth book — conceived as an intimate ode to her dying and now departed mother — had been hijacked by societal events. But I suspect her answer would be no. Because woven into the core theme of her mother and her mourning is the broader personal message she relates about race and (still) mitigated freedom. “(In) everything I make...