User:Dranian

I’m from rolling pastures

veined by dry creek beds,

where centenarian white oaks—

younger than great-grandma Lucy

And her calamine feet—

shade the black angus mixed with

the santa gertrudis (as they

chew their cud).

I’m from kitchens

where green beans

and ice cream

make music when we

make them,

gardens and orchards where we

grow corn and tomatoes,

watermelons and apples,

and where we enjoy

the occasional persimmon pudding.

Ambrosia isn’t coconut and pineapple,

it’s two cups of sugar,

two cups of milk,

two cups of flour,

four eggs, cinnamon, vanilla,

and two cups of persimmon pulp.

I’m stuck between Erect

and Climax,

on the way to High Point,

but I never go there.

I go down yonder

and ask, “ ‘Chup to?”

I buy hay from Jack Fagg,

honey from Janice Horny,

meet John Brown at 3 a.m.

to discuss politics and watch

his drunk father drink more.

I see my cousins

when I drive 22 to town,

“Routh Oil Company,”

“Alvin’s Automotive.”

Eric, adopted Cherokee,

still my blood-kin, gives me 5th Avenues

to say goodbye.

In the barnyard,

I smell the diesel

Granddaddy Routh used to scrub away

the grease from under our fingernails.

At the dinner table,

I taste fire in the peppers

Grandpa Cranford collected in his shirt pocket.

I’m from coldwater springs

where we lose boots and calves

in the mud, like quicksand but only knee deep.

I’m from flower gardens

where opossums slumber,

where they wake under the moon

to eat the leftover cat food.

On my farm,

we build cairns as monuments

for the dogs and cats,

feed corn to the deer and save them

from the hunters—

sanctuary. “Jesus is Lord

Over Gray’s Chapel,”

but my grandpas taught me

how to fish, how to sow,

to kiss the catfish

and throw them back

(their lips look just like a person’s),

taught me how to look for pine hearts

and cut wood already fallen,

how to give life

and only borrow it.