Poetry by Kristin W. Davis
Type of Removal: Died 15 Years
Condition on Discharge: Unimproved
Record card from the Willowbrook State School, on Staten Island, NY, provided by the resident’s family.
Unimproved
as a plot of land, scrub
and brush and strangling
vine, fibers twined
too tight to undo, as
a building left
to rubble and brick,
a ramshackle, fixer-
upper, dirt
cheap, as a rutted
road, dust billows
up as you bump
over gravel or as
a dry cough, persistent,
or a fade of words
on a page, soft ink
on pink tissue, a kinder-
gartener who still can’t
grip a pencil, an idiot
who after years at school
has expired,
as a loaf of bread, a carton
of milk.
Manifesto
Willow limbs taper until they cannot
reach further, until they must
bend to ground,
until their elegant tears
flutter yellow. With fingertips, part
the watery curtain, lie back
on shallow roots, watch
sun shards splash hardened bark.
I want a place such as this
to glimpse the prism—
imagine this space could haven
a child, a family, an entire city
of tender ones. What if
to tend were exalted? What if
kindness were currency? This willow
a grove of willows to tether earth and sky.
