Our Cities of Birth

Jennifer Kronovet

Outside the city of X
a child hid in the fields. He hid
in the fields of wheat, the wheat

grown for the mill that sat at the edge
of the fields where he hid. What languages
did he not speak? The languages he spoke hide

in the fields of language. Here is the mill,
my anti-inheritance.
I’m powering it up for what?

Old, he talked to me about the mystic
economy. He wanted to fill the mill
of his mind with bucks, fund his languages

with bucks as their absence brought him
to sell his printing press, buy thin dresses
to sell at markets in the fields of English.

I can’t money the mill of his mind now, trace it
from wheat to what to ideas we can move into
instead of a homeland. I power

the mill down, am powering it down.
I’m revving the ferry, shooting
an arrow into a past I can explain.

The dead economy of home funds me.