I come from
Confederate flags on the back of jacked up truck beds
Hunting rifle in the rear window
Bumper sticker that says ‘Try and take it from me’
I come from bible school study is illegal, so walk 50 yards to the one room trailer off the school property and teach the word of Jesus Christ
AMEN
I come from women wearing sin sifters over buns of uncut hair
No pants wearing, no make up wearing, no swearing, no sex (before marriage)
Man knows the word of God, so women can know it through the man’s word
Horse and buggy drops plops down two lane highways with orange double lines that curve around Blue Ridge Mountains
I come from the smog of the Ohio Valley, acid rain, acid rain
Mountaintop removal coal mines replaced by wind turbines
Corn fields and forests for miles, rotten roots,
We fracked the hell outta that riverbed and only turned up stone
Damnation, Contamination, it’s our right
we own this property,
it was empty when we claimed it
Old sofas, old refrigerators, go out the front door to the porch, and topless toilet bowls become planters for pansies and chrysanthemums
Apple orchards harvested by people without papers
Confederate flag on the front lawn waving proud, hung in a tree
In your face racist
Proud to be an American
It takes exactly two generations to forget where you come from
If forgetting is what you are told to do
I know exactly where I come from. I am the third generation.
I was born in the living room of a cabin made out of materials salvaged from a fallen down schoolhouse
Made by my father and his two brothers and all their wives. The wives aren’t listed on the property deed, even in this generation.
They read a book on how to build a house, and taught themselves carpentry as they reconstructed the old school house into a one room cabin with a loft
The only new things in this place are the once round logs cut into planks nailed over the tar paper and the toxic pink cotton candy insulation.
You can’t hang art in double matted frames on walls made of half rounds
I come from weed smoking, too young to be a beatnik, right on time to be a radical
Thinker
Intellectualizing draft dodging, time to get out of the city and back to the land kind of people
Dad says to me, we never considered what it might be for you to be raised in the bible belt
We had no bible on the bookshelves at home, but Dad wore a working man’s tool belt
Dad bought Mom an anthology of art deco artists or impressionists painters everytime he lost his temper
So we had shelves and shelves of art books.
My favorite painter is Georgia O'keeffe, every new year Mom would buy me a calendar of her paintings a new image every month, every year, until I left home.
