~ Delta Poetry Review ~

Jianqing Zheng

Seeing the Unseen

after Eudora Welty’s Jackson

This is a common view snapped

by Eudora Welty in the 1930s:

a sign for colored entrance

hangs like an assertion

over a black man who

stands by the ticket booth

while a middle-aged white woman

brushes by like dancing the cancan.

Those old signs have faded

in the brainpan of memories,

but history never leaves.

Its stubbornness redeems

rivers, streets and railroads

as the dividing lines to hold

life as two separate parts

to imagine human harmony.

Jianqing Zheng’s recent book is Still Motion, coauthored with the Louisiana photographer Leo Touchet. His forthcoming book is Dreaminations (Madville, 2026). He received the 2024 poetry fellowship from the Mississippi Arts Commission.