“Beautiful City of Tirzah” by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher

In “Beautiful City of Tirzah”, Harrison Candelaria Fletcher plays with time, space, and

memory to relate the story of his childhood through the removed perspective of the owl Tirzah.

Unlike James Baldwin or Jo Ann Beard, Fletcher chooses to introduce the thesis of his essay at

once. He writes, “Always we take them in (…) mending cut skin, matted fur, and broken

feathers” (Harrison 1), establishing that the essay is about strays and the hurting and healing

thereof. Whereas Baldwin and Beard explore their theses throughout the entirety of their essays,

Fletcher establishes his early on to great effect, setting up the story he wants to tell. He uses the

reader’s expectations of this thesis to subvert and support the thematic narratives throughout the

essay, such as when he contrasts the mother “tapping a Russian olive switch on the floor” (1) and

“hold[ing] the owl to the warmth of her body” (2). Through this characterization, the reader

understands that Fletcher’s mother was kinder to the animals they took in than to her children, a

topic he explores further on in the essay when the owl is thought to have flown away and she

blames the children: “‘One of you brats must have left the front door open again’” (13).

Furthermore, Fletcher utilizes paragraph breaks (in the form of a collective of five

asterisks) to move quickly and efficiently through time. The owl grows up much faster in the

essay than she would have were the story told as Fletcher remembers it, with all the time in-

between. By leaving out these stretches of time, he allows for the story to flow better and for his

memories of the owl to act as a representative of his childhood. To tie together these brief

moments, he loops back around to the imagery of wood; first, the “olive switch” (1); then, the

“slice of aspen bark” found by Fletcher’s grandfather (5); then, the “sweet scent of piñon”

Fletcher’s mother burns in the house (8); finally, the “prickly pear” beneath which they bury the

owl (14). The olive, aspen, and piñon all reappear selectively throughout the text: olive is a
painful wood, used for stinging whips or bars on a window; aspen is the owl’s wood, used by

Tirzah to nest and blend in with her grey feathers; piñon is the wood of memory, conjuring

Fletcher’s mother back to a happier time.

Fletcher employs a great deal of sensory imagery in the essay—the feeling of damp hair

down his back, the sound of the switch tapping on the floor, the baby owl squinting at the family.

In deeming touch, sound, and sight to be the most important senses in telling this story, he allows

the reader insight into how his memories take shape—a look into his own mind. Metaphors are

plentiful throughout the essay, from the kitchen of his childhood home, where the ceiling light

shines as “bright as an interrogation lamp” (1), to the night surrounding the home, where

“shadows drip[ping] like ink from the cottonwoods” (1), to his mother “savoring the syllables”

of Tirzah’s name, “which break like sunlight through her window crystals, turquoise and yellow”

(3), to Tirzah flying with “white smoke curling around her wings” (8). The harsh judgment of the

ceiling light is akin to the mother’s displeasure with her son who stayed out too late; the shadows

dripping like ink conjures a visual in the mind that would have been less impactful had the word

“ink” been left out; the name ‘Tirzah’ is compared to stained glass, fragile and beautiful and

impermanent; the white smoke around Tirzah’s wings is not literal but figurative, turning her

momentarily from an owl to a phoenix.

Opposing viewpoints are also prevalent in the essay, first introduced through the

character of the grandmother, Desolina, who is the first in the family to dislike the owl—whereas

Fletcher’s mother loves Tirzah and Fletcher himself acts either ambivalent or mildly interested in

the owl, Desolina calls the owl an “evil spirit” and a “bad omen” (4). Later, when the family

goes to visit “churches, graveyards, ranch towns, and adobe ruins” (5), Fletcher’s mother

attempts to teach her children their culture and history, but all they want to do is play Last of the
Mohicans in the detritus. This reference to an established piece of popular media vamps up the

dissonance between the mother’s generation and Fletcher’s—the only history and culture the

children are willing to know is what they see in irreverent, inaccurate movies like Mohicans.

Indirect description also plays a role in conveying the breadth of the story. The location of

Fletcher’s upbringing is not specified until page 5; previous to the naming of Albuquerque, he

hints at the location with descriptions such as the mother naming their pets with “Spanish words

that just sound nice” (3), the cottonwoods that surround the home, and the scene of Fletcher’s

brother playing in a dusty ditch plants the assumption that the story is set somewhere in the

Southwestern United States. Although Fletcher does not directly reference another text, his

descriptions of his brother conjure to my mind To Kill a Mockingbird, which further locates the

story in the Deep (US American) South; by knowing the terrain of TKAM, we are able to transfer

that visual to “Beautiful City” without Fletcher having to establish it in so many words. When

they bury the owl in the “fine red sand”, the arc of the dusty ditch is complete; there is no need to

move forward in time, only to return to the beginning.