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Home>Stories>Poet Jason Reynolds Responds to a Photograph by Gordon Parks

Art in Focus

# Poet Jason Reynolds Responds to a Photograph by Gordon Parks

 min read

As part of our “Poetry is a country” festival we invited celebrated American poets to compose something new inspired by art in our collection. Jason Reynolds’s poem responds to *Washington, D.C. Government Charwoman (American Gothic), July 1942,* a photograph by Gordon Parks.

Charwoman Interrupted Again

Jason Reynolds

and so when you were posed,  inched into the center of the frame  like a heavy sculpture, woman  chiseled from workday, and when the question came of  whether or not you could turn  the broom upside-down, the detritus  of a good guh’ment job dancing on the straw head, and when the mop was placed behind you looking  

on like a jealous white girl, backdrop blurred, bars of american rag,  stitched-on star-shaped peepholes, light  shining in from some future  where my grandma would beg  for the same job not too far from you  so she wouldn’t have to keep going  all the way to silver spring to put  elbow grease to miss barbara’s baseboards,   did you think,  

who is this little man with this camera  telling me to stand, telling me to smile  or not smile, telling me to act normaland poised? don’t he know you can’t  raise five kids without poise? that’s my normal.don’t he know I got five kids to raise  and they won’t want to hear nothing  about no modeling or even care or question  why someone would want to make art of char? don’t he know I got a job to do? 

and on the off chance you were not posed, on the off chance he came into the building,  body and lens swinging from his neck  after the suits and hard shoes had made their way  back to their families for roast chicken  and small talk about FDR, and spotted you, alone and perfect at the top of the steps,  tell me, please tell me, he found you  with that broom off the floor,  beating beating beating dust out the flag.

 

Please note: We have tried to preserve the formatting of poems, but some devices may distort how text appears. Read the poem in its original formatting here.

Gordon Parks, *Washington, D.C. Government Charwoman (American Gothic)*, July 1942, gelatin silver print, Corcoran Collection (The Gordon Parks Collection), 2016.117.271

Explore new creations by some of America’s most important living poets.Read more

Jason Reynolds

2020 – 2022 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, New York Times bestselling author, and faculty member for the Writing for Young People MFA Program at Lesley University

August 28, 2023

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