The Yellow House. Sarah M. Broom

of Space by Gaston Bachelard, translated by Maria Jolas, copyright © 1958 by Presses Universitaires de France, translation copyright © 1964 by Penguin Random House LLC. Used by permission of Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved; Tracy K. Smith, excerpt from “Ash” from Wade in the Water. Originally from the New Yorker (November 23, 2015). Copyright © 2015, 2018 by Tracy K. Smith. Reprinted with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc. on behalf of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, graywolfpress.org; LeAlan Jones, Public Domain; Yance Ford, excerpt from the film Strong Island; John Milton, excerpt from Paradise Lost. Public Domain; Unified New Orleans Plan, Public Domain; Lil Wayne, excerpt from AllHipHop.com interview in early 2006; Adrienne Rich, the lines from “Diving into the Wreck”. Copyright © 2016 by the Adrienne Rich Literary Trust. Copyright © 1973 by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., from Collected Poems: 1950—2012 by Adrienne Rich. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc; Joan Didion, excerpt from “In the Islands” from The White Album by Joan Didion. Copyright © 1979 by Joan Didion. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux; Sam Hamill, excerpt from Narrow Road to the Interior: And Other Writings (Shambhala Classics).

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       Published simultaneously in Canada

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title

      eISBN 978-0-8021-4654-0

      Grove Press

      an imprint of Grove Atlantic

      154 West 14th Street

      New York, NY 10011

      Distributed by Publishers Group West

      groveatlantic.com

       for three women, with love and heart

       Amelia “Lolo”

       Auntie Elaine

       Ivory Mae

       CONTENTS

       Cover

      Praise for The Yellow House

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Dedication

       MAP 1

       MOVEMENT I The World Before Me

I. Amelia “Lolo”

II. Joseph, Elaine, and Ivory

III. Webb

IV. Simon Broom

V. Short End, Long Street

VI. Betsy

VII. The Crown

       MOVEMENT II The Grieving House

       I. Hiding Places

       II. Origins

       III. The Grieving House

       IV. Map of My World

       V. Four Eyes

       VI. Elsewheres

       VII. Interiors

       VIII. Tongues

       IX. Distances

       X. 1999

       Movement III Water

       I. Run

       II. Survive

       III. Settle

       IV. Bury

       V. Trace

       VI. Erase

       VII. Forget

       VIII. Perdido

       Movement IV Do You Know What It Means? Investigations

       I. Sojourner

       II. Saint Rose

       III. Saint Peter

       IV. McCoy

       V. Photo Op

       VI. Investigations

       VII. Phantoms

       VIII. Dark Night, Wilson

       IX. Cutting Grass

       After

       Acknowledgments

       Photographs

       Back Cover

       MAP

       draw me a map of what you see

       then I will draw a map of what you never see

       and guess me whose map will be bigger than whose?

      Kei Miller

       To learn how to read any map is to be indoctrinated into that mapmaker’s culture.

      Peter Turchi

      From high up, fifteen thousand feet above, where the aerial photographs are taken, 4121 Wilson Avenue, the address I know best, is a minuscule point, a scab of green. In satellite images shot from higher still, my former street dissolves into the toe of Louisiana’s boot. From this vantage point, our address, now mite size, would appear to sit in the Gulf of Mexico. Distance lends perspective, but it can also shade, misinterpret. From these great heights, my brother Carl would not be