poetry

archives to ashes

Photo courtesy The Daily Camera.

archives to ashes

what happens when the museum burns down –
the space that’s supposed to hold your history
the archives and artifacts
the record of your past?

we know this happens –
the county courthouse burned down
taking its deeds to the grave
leaving us unsure of our own house’s age

the Library of Congress burned
not once but twice
leaving Thomas Jefferson to reseed it
with his own books

but for these little western mining towns
what burns with the history museum?
photographs, yearbooks, maps and bits of settler life
mine scrip and speakeasy keepsakes

our memories are so faulty
without bits of concrete evidence
it’s too easy to have license
to create a new past

poetry

Where I’m From

This poem uses a format George Ella Lyon has invited others to borrow to tell the story of where they are from.

Where I’m From

I am from newsprint
from Deep Woods Off! and Coppertone
three Rust Belt houses
moving up and down the social ladder
(the smell of the neighbor’s
lily-of-the-valley in the spring)
I am from creek shale and grapevine
twined into forts and swings
I’m from homemade applesauce
and too much booze
from Thomas Francis Browns
and William Joseph Schaafs
I’m from the secret-keepers
and the never-satisfieds
from the optimism of Good morning, morning glory!
and the poverty of That’s from hunger
I’m from Lenten incense, shamrock Trinities
I’m from Erie and Éire
from lake perch and cinnakuka
from the shot-up tail
of the Luck of the Irish B-17
that spared by German grandfather
and humid summers at the Shore
when Grandy showed me Saturn’s rings
the long wood shelves above my dad’s childhood desk
held the spiral-bound scrapbooks
with my grandfather’s cases and speeches
yellowed and tearing
charisma my father would never match
I am from immigrant industry
all of us broken
and heartsick for land