Definite/Indefinite

Abstract

Definite/Indefinite Bryan Head (bio) Articles are the smallest unit within the English language.The difference, in English, between the articles a and the, can seem minor at times.To say I am wearing a watch is different from saying I am wearing the watch.A watch can come from anywhere, but the watch is your father's, and his father's, and so on.My grandfather served briefly in the military, stationed on the Panama Canal. He was given a medal for giving his body to a dangerous military experiment. A newspaper called him "brave," and his pain "terrible," and "classified."In high school my father harvested tobacco in the summer. He still makes jokes. He says hours in the sun have burnt off all his hair.If I tell someone I've lost a watch, someone might help by telling me the time.When I told someone I lost the watch, someone wanted to help, and said nothing.In English, some nouns weigh enough to not need articles, like the words church, and time, and home, which, next to certain articles, weigh less.We buried my grandfather near a church in Kinston, North Carolina. The wind whisked rose petals off the casket and made the doves clumsy.Once, after leaving church, my father called to tell me he had a small cancer on his skin.My grandfather lived, briefly, in a home, walking through the halls and handing candy to the nurses. Weeks after his wife died due to heart disease, my grandfather died, returning home. [End Page 160] A home is a building with weak lights, bedpans, and stale carpets. Home, like church, is the sound flinted from the chimes behind his house, his wife's breath on his ear.I'm circling the articles in a student's poem about her father. She uses the, referring to a deer that leaps in front of a speeding car. I tell her this is incorrect, that she's never seen that deer before. She says I'm never not moving in the direction that will one day kill my father. I tell her this direction is called time, and therefore doesn't require an article.I'm driving by a church on my way to work. The next month I notice a mole on my father's cheek. Outside is the sun, falling like a curtain over my skin. There is a gust of wind. There are the chimes. [End Page 161] Bryan Head Bryan Head is a poet from Asheville, North Carolina. He is currently completing an MFA at the University of Maryland. He is the incoming editor of the Sakura Review and co-manages HomeWord Youth Poetry, a youth spoken word and creative writing organization in North Carolina. Copyright © 2019 Middlebury College Publications