Portland, Oregon, late October 2020
Across my street, the temporary
chainlink fence still in place
around the PacWest Building,
the bus stop empty except
for a woman and what looks
from my 4th floor window
to be a schnauzer like the one
my parents bought
for my six-year-old brother
when I left for college.
Our parents now long dead,
my brother on another
series of chemo treatments.
The fence went up the day after
the murder of George Floyd,
that same day all the buildings
on my street installed large sheets
of plywood against their glass
windows. Living this close
to the Justice Center, I should
not have been surprised
by the nightly flash bangs
or smoke bombs, the sirens
and loudspeakers, the tear gas
that twice seeped in through
my “air-tight” windows.
It’s been more than five months.
My two favorite neighborhood
restaurants have closed
for good, the branch bank
open only by appointment.
The woman at the bus stop
is wearing her pandemic mask,
bright blue with white letters
I can’t read from here.
The leaves on the elm out front
have lost their will, yellowing
in the top branches. The election
only eight days away, more protests
promised, more violence, no matter
who wins. A bus comes. Woman
and dog disappear. The sun
breaks through and brightens
my street, then much too quickly
retreats. The radiator in my study
rattles. I will call my brother
this afternoon. I wish I had
something sweet to tell him—
something, anything sweet.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 24, Issue 1.
Andrea Hollander moved to Portland, Oregon, in 2011, after living for more than three decades in the Arkansas Ozarks, where she was innkeeper of a bed & breakfast for 15 years and Writer-in-Residence at Lyon College for 22. Hollander’s 5th full-length poetry collection was a finalist for the Best Book Award in Poetry from the American Book Fest; her 4th was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award; her 1st won the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Honors include two Pushcart Prizes (in poetry and literary nonfiction), two fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the 2021 49th Parallel Award in Poetry. In 2017 she initiated the Ambassador Writing Seminars, which she conducted in her home, but since the pandemic, via Zoom. Her website is www.andreahollander.net.
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