A Post Thanksgiving Poem
Origins
My maternal grandmother’s grandfather
was a butcher—he was Fleischman.
I am a poet
who knows the dreams
of my mother dwell in my sister
My paternal grandfather’s grandfather
was a farmer—he was Meier.
I am a poet
whose song is sung in
graphite and ink
They left Europe
for a similar place of cold and
want. Where gray covers the earth
for months on end, and frozen air
sears the lungs.
I am a poet
whose truth rises on
ice-bound floes
I am the voice of my mother
a rock of disbelief, her
hope a crumbling house, my
birth her bitter denial. My chilled
moment of delusion lasts a year,
or a lifetime.
I am a poet
my sea-weapons
incantations of change
I am like and unlike my grandmother.
She certain of her place and lineage, her
favors and grievances, my grandfather’s
acquiescence validating her at every turn,
every slight, every diminishment. Ice
infusing our lungs, our breath.
I am a poet
who dreams of snow
gracing a Michigan hillside
My mother, her daughter, adoptive
stranger. She who fled the snow
for the warming coast.
An insult my grandma never forgave.
I am a poet
whose voice courses through
the blood of German strangers
I am the scribe, recording the reasons we hold
ourselves to impossible expectations.
Retelling the tales—ghost stories
that reside in our bones.
I am a poet
whose words infuse mitten state
apples hawked from a rusting truck