WHERE I COME FROM: Final poem for Native American Heritage Month

My dear friend, poet Levi Romero, turned the poem, "Where I'm From" by George Ella Lyon, into a writing exercise that I, along with many others, have used in writing workshops, especially with young people. One day, while teaching, I wrote my own poem based on this writing exercise.

WHERE I COME FROM

I come from crocheted dishrags

and hand-me-down clothes from cousins

on the “good” side of the family.

I come from canvas cotton sacks (200 pounds for an adult

“but you’re a big girl now, eleven,

you can pull enough cotton to fill that ol’ sack”),

from Lifesavers and Nehi Orange

and salty peanuts dropped into sweating-cold bottles of RC Cola

and traded among us kids for back rubs

when we couldn’t quite stand up straight after a day in the cotton rows.

I come from the heady, dangerous ozone smell

of summer thunderstorm nights

when I walked alone across town

to buy my mother’s cigarettes.

I come from rain-soaked redbuds and lilacs and irises,

from mesquite and cottonwoods,

from beachfront bougainvillea and date palms.

I come from drive-in movies and drunk fathers and mothers

and singing in the church choir

and stone-headed stubbornness.

I come from Sequoiah and John Ross,

from “Cielito Lindo” sung everywhere

(I thought to me since it had my name in it),

from driving out in the dark to see the desert bloom after a rain,

from altruism and diabetes.

I come from “get your nose out of that book”

and “if it’d been a snake, it’d bit me”

and Grandpa’s sermons in the pulpit on summer Sunday visits.

I’m from the Great Smokies and Tahlequah and Broken Arrow,

from Highland crofts and Dublin slums and England’s younger sons

from San Diego and Coronado and El Cajon,

I come from snobdodgers and frybread for breakfast

and from fried chicken I helped kill and clean for Sunday dinner.

I come from the month the money ran out,

even my illegal paycheck from the drugstore after school,

and the grocer wouldn’t give more credit,

when some angel left a bushel basket of turnips on our kitchen doorstep.

I come from Aunt Joan and Uncle Glyn on their dirt-poor farm

who took us in on a moment’s notice, six kids deserted by both parents,

and raised us with our four cousins

in that house the size of my living room with never a cent or a thank-you.

I come from those nights on the mattress on that kitchen floor,

waking to take little ones to the outhouse in the dark,

from cooking for harvest hands and combine crews

while Aunt spent the day on the tractor with the men,

from her dark Indian spitfire and his tall, Indian peace.

I come from all the photos of us kids in places all over the country

where Dad dragged us around like a tail behind him,

from all the photos of the five babies after me

and the photos of all of us with grandparents and cousins

and my school photos from San Diego, Kenosha, Arlington,

and so many others I don’t even remember,

stored only in my brain, except for the handful

Aunt Joan saved for me all those years until we found each other again

when Uncle Glyn was dying in his quiet way

and cousin Dickie’s abused son, raised by his grandparents,

bussed and hitchhiked back from the Navy to sleep

on the floor at the foot of Uncle’s bed, faithful hound.

I come from my grandmother’s Cherokee teaching stories and stubborn strength,

from that grandfather’s wild goose chases and big dreams and fine talk,

from my other grandmother’s domestic fussing and ambitious nurturing,

from that grandfather’s preaching and Bible values,

from my father’s hatred of his Indian half and tolerance toward everyone else,

from his bright, inquiring mind, his hope for humanity, and his drunken violence,

from my mother’s cold beauty and rewriting of the past,

from the short tragedy of her life, and the strength with which she bore it.

I come from a long line of male preachers and teachers, drinkers and dreamers,

from conjure women, curanderas, women with the Sight,

and women who survive and make do.

I come from fallen gentry and half-breed hill trash, from parsonages and trailer courts.

I contain all of these,

and I choose,

I say,

who I will be.

(published in Imagination and Place: An Anthology, 2009)

Books of Interest by Writers of Color—Allison Joseph, Levi Romero, Kim Shuck

Allison Joseph, My Father's Kites (Steel Toe Press) Joseph is probably the only African American woman in the United States to run an MFA program and edit a major literary magazine. This country tends not to give those literary positions of power to women of color, yet Joseph does both. She is a professor of creative writing at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, where she directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing and serves as editor-in-chief of Crab Orchard Review. She has received many major awards, most notably the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, the Associated Writing Programs Prize, and the Academy of American Poets Prize. Joseph was born in London to parents of Caribbean heritage and grew up in the Bronx. Much of her usually free-verse writing revolves around her family and the often confusing and difficult world of those New York City growing-up years. However, in My Father's Kites, her sixth book, she uses the restraints of the sonnet form to deal with the pain of the death and celebrate the idiosyncratic life of her difficult father from whom she had been estranged. As I have found so often among writers of color, Joseph works to open doors to other writers, as well. She founded and directs the Young Writers Workshop at SIUC, a four-day residential creative writing summer program for high school students, and she also serves as moderator of the Creative Writing Opportunities List, an extremely useful (but labor-intensive) online list-serve that distributes calls for submissions and literary contest information to other writers free of charge. Joseph is a major writer whose work is accessible and full of wit and insight. As usual, I’m giving the link to the small-press publisher’s website. Please support small and university presses without whom we would see few writers of color published.

Levi Romero, A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works (University of New Mexico Press) Romero’s family has lived in northern New Mexico since the 1600s, and much of his writing is about preserving those familial and community memories. A veteran of the Española lowrider culture and a research professor in the University of New Mexico’s School of Architecture, Romero combines the indigenous rural, lowcura, and academic strands of his life into a poetry of wry wit and celebration of the rich mix of cultures from which he comes. The centerpiece poem of A Poetry of Remembrance, which sold out within a month of publication, "Lowcura: An Introspective Virtual Cruise Through an American Subcultural Tradition," is a tour de force making fun of academic jargon and attitudes while it paints a loving portrait of not only the lowrider tradition that he loves but the whole mix of cultures of which northern New Mexico is made. Romero has for years reached out to the hidden community with workshops in detention centers, homeless shelters, nursing homes, and poor and working-class neighborhoods. His work is moving and hilarious and truly deserves the widest audience. Here is the link for A Poetry of Remembrance, his second book.

Kim Shuck, Smuggling Cherokee (Greenfield Review Press) A Cherokee/Sac & Fox poet, Shuck won the Native Writers of the Americas First Book Award for Smuggling Cherokee, as well as the Diane Decorah Award for Poetry. Shuck’s eye for the perfect, telling detail of life to bring the reader into her world and to smack that reader in the face with a powerful insight. Yet her poetry is lightened by sardonic wit and true tenderness for the aching beauty of the world. Shuck is also a beading and fiber artist using traditional Indigenous techniques to create her dazzling work. She is deeply involved in community-building and teaching. Expect great things in the future from this multi-talented young writer. Here’s the link for the book.

Next week, I’ll cover more of these terrific writers.