Green Linden Press

Solar Eclipse

Raise your hand if
you live in a village! I do, I live in a village
in the ‘United’

States of America, a barn for every plotted
plot where finally

it rained & peonies
slump in two
shades of pink: oof:
heaven: heavy: seven

planets are in retrograde, in retrograde rose petals
in honey, the pollinators, the proposed Dollar

General where the motor court cottages
now nestle: hustle: the organizing

emails, the rally & the rest.
Rest. Call my elder to talk

about death which I do believe is the French
kiss of politics, that bee-buzzing

mess where the billboard meets
the field of soy: sigh: what Temperance

I do so hype in orange light
busted across the old bra factory lot, gravel

under grass: root
lock: stitch back: dark Sun sews

every parcel and every tract:

☼
The purpose and intent of each zoning district as spelled out within the ordinance gives
a guiding foundation as to how the municipality desires to allow certain uses and other
provisions to guide future growth and development in a particular area of the township,
even preserved or public lands as well, the County Planning Director writes. As you
can see,

It’s coming for us
says Charlie V., he who remembers the 70s
out in the fields: checkered

smallholder yields: his uncle
straightening up in the shadow of a hedgerow saying

Someday, you’re gonna get all your food
at the store: morsels:
parcels: seed wars:
land sales: by the grist

light of the valleys my village
is Gorgon-sighted, not united

within the ordinance
collects pop bottles shoots out sketches
of Arabs, grows delphinium

deals heroin, says made in America
says it’s classist to resist a dollar

chain: but may I Arraign:
I want to believe a moth,
a mouse, or a peasant

economy can live, not only
because the beast has over-

looked to crush it: eclipse it: trouble it:
fuck it: when it comes

for us, with our own
names emblazoned on the patents & titles speaking

in tongues—all I want

is for the villagers not to feel flattered
by the crushing.

☼
Beginning at a stone who makes it hum
what is eclipsed what is coming for us
what has come Beginning at a stone

thence by land now           of Valentine Eplar South
five degrees West four      hundred & four perches to a stone
thence by land now           of James Potter South forty
five degrees East one         hundred & fifty perches to a stone
thence by land now           of Ealon Millers North five degrees
East five hundred               & eight perches to a stone
North eighty five               degrees West one hundred &

twenty four perches       to the Beginning             
chain to stone                   with all Mines, Minerals, Quarries,
Meadows, Marshes,         Savannahs, Swamps, Cripples,
Woods, Underwoods,      Timber and Trees, Ways, Waters, Water-
Courses, Commodities,     Liberties, Appurtenances

chain to stone                   To Have and to Hold  
hereby granted (except     
as before excepted)           unto the said Reuben Haines
surveyed in pursuance 
of a Warrant          dated the Tenth Day of July

1767                        In the beginning was a stone   

to a stone
to a stone

Because the abundance of land was on
their minds, the Family Locket
bloggers write, many of our Pennsylvania
German ancestors sought
land ownership as soon as they

were able: fable:
vested: valid:
valley to valley
stone to stone

then an engine sounds
in the alley & up the alley

☼
here comes a gaggle of kids walking alongside, hanging off the tractor
while one kid drives. They are motility

in liquid pink: I magnify: they stupefy:
they bounce & slide against the steely
squiggle of a short bearded

dude in cut-off everything, he’s along
to supervise—I recognize—it’s his white

van with ‘This is My Gun Family’ decal
with silhouettes of many types of guns—they go

left at West Street then up
to Plum. Ten minutes later here they come

around the block at five mph, park & switch
drivers. Each time they pass

over the course of an hour I shout to the girl
Brooklyn, baby bullet buzzing bronze along behind

her diesel hive, ‘Are you gonna drive?!’
Right in the middle of the school day

the engine cuts,
I guess they’re done, but then it fires up again

and here comes Brooklyn, last and best,
flying tractor beneath a high, high Sun:

☼
Ruminator: Illuminator:
Speculator: I see the falls
and deaths of emperors
Beginning at a stone

was appealing to our ancestors

Remember 160 perches
equals an acre a perfect acre
with the appurtenances

but what, exactly, IS a perch?
16 ½ feet

By chain to the Beginning forever
free and clear of all restrictions
and reserving only the fifth part of all Gold
and Silver Ore for the Commonwealth

To be delivered at the Pitt’s mouth
clean of all charges
around the moon
around the sun
who sees the fall
who makes it hum
to be delivered

at the Pitt’s mouth what is eclipsed
by one amoebic disc Moon
clicks into place
and the village goes

a little dark

☼
The grief comes around, it’s round
autarkic yarrow, what makes a garbage
of our guileless love with field and meadow:

It’s only so long before we get pushed,
says a villager, into the dump or the dump

gets built around us: who ‘found’ us: whose
fortunes: frontiers: If the proposed

Dollar General project requires a permit from the Army
Corps of Engineers, then the first

question we need to answer—
A hundred meetings: rhetorical
dancers: that store went

up in three weeks flat:
Some comrades said, Do
this, do that, but what they say
they do not do

they do not do
who makes it hum
beginning at a stone
Was the horse pasture

where the Wal-Mart is
That was the edge of town
before the drive home

Man, don’t even get me started
on the drive home

When It comes
back for us
A meadow
When it comes back

What does a dollar do in retrograde:

Nah, yard signs are divisive.

☼
Each time a constituent greets a bee to pollinate
civic vigor, scrub out the difference

between a poem & a letter
to the Editor—Dear Editor,

it’s the sizzle of land money, French fries,
dishes, tractors, palms

flat to the grass at auction: Suspension: Speculation:
apprehension: shaking
hands with neighbors & farmers

on all sides we die into the boundedness of grasses
plotted: taken:
granted: golden: when the Moon moves

in front of the Sun & the meadow
comes back for its wild

twin: twain: what sloppy
rain I do so strop

in linen light and thunder. A lackluster
comrade reports drilling has commenced

in the backyard, now roadwork goes on
inside her to make straight the overpass called I see

No Point: but may I Anoint

this our pointless hive: heavy:
humming: heaven: cause I see big slow

rain with fireflies in it and earlier came before
a blue & shapely shining pine, an intersection to keep

it real but not to Keep—Sun says
raise your hand

if you wanna approach
your wild twin: I know
we’re probably going to have a Dollar

General in east Penns Valley, Annie writes,
but I feel really inspired by this process &

You’ll breathe out
exactly as many times
as you’ll breathe in.

Abby Minor lives in the ridges and valleys of central Pennsylvania, where she works on poems, essays, drawings, gardens, and projects exploring regional and reproductive politics. She teaches poetry in her region’s low-income nursing homes, volunteers with the internationally active group Abortion Conversation Projects, and co-directs an arts education nonprofit called Ridgelines Language Arts. In 2018 she was awarded Bitch Media’s Writing Fellowship in Sexual Politics. Her first book, As I Said: A Dissent (Ricochet Editions, 2022), is a collection of long documentary poems concerning abortion, justice, and citizenship in her family and in U.S. history.

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