Jeanine Walker

They Hear Him

All of my relatives say they hear him:
he is the knocking of the robin’s wing
just so against the window, the springtime
buzz of the electric saw, the rise
of children’s laughter from the roundabout.
Wonderful, I say, but I’m sour.
He’s my father. He would not be wing
or saw or child. He would not consent
to changing his form thus. I am certain:
he’s quiet. I never hear his low baritone
chords. Not the rumble of a throat full
of sleep. Not the soft upward lilt when
he says Jeanine. He’s gone. Or an awful
truth: he talks. He does not talk to me.

Jeanine Walker is the author of The Two of Them Might Outlast Me (Groundhog Poetry Press, 2023) and the recipient of a 2025 microgrant for Korean poetry translation from Seattle City of Literature. Her poems and translations have found homes in Poetry, Denver Quarterly, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She holds a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from the University of Houston and teaches poetry at Hugo House in Seattle and online through Jeanine’s Poetry School.