Chanute, Kansas
(Ms. Parham, 2005--revised 2014)
Where I’m from the sky
is the ocean
stretching horizon to horizon
Driving by, you forget to look at the combines, the silos, the rusted-out oil drills, the fat
satisfied hawks because everything
is dwarfed
under that vast expanse of blue.
Where I’m from people believe in God.
Where I’m from people talk about the rain and the humidity and if it’ll be a good year
for the crops. They don’t talk
about reading, writing, or ‘rithmetic
unless they’re talking about how teachers
get paid more
than their sons
working in the cement factory on the edge of town.
(But where I’m from
in my house with white gables and overhanging trees
books lined the walls
piled on the tables
stacked under my bed and under my
covers
kept me up until 2 AM on school nights which always left me
eyes closed
drooling on my open notebook
in physics class
and English.)
Where I’m from people stare when you drive by.
When they don’t recognize you
when you’re different
(because you’re new, because you’re old, because you’ve pierced your bottom lip, because you’re Latino, because you’re driving a foreign car, because you moved Out East and you look familiar but they just can’t quite place you)
their eyes are angry, distrustful.
Everyone’s a little afraid of different
Everyone hopes it rubs off
(once they know you, once they recognize you, they brag about you when you’re not around, they claim you,
as if you were the wacky neighbor
on a sitcom)
They haven’t seen much outside of Neosho County, where I’m from, except Wichita, Kansas City, maybe Joplin. The rest of the world is just one big mall where everybody’s in a gang and everybody else drives too fast. Everybody stays put, where I’m from.
Where I’m from girls have to wear shirts by age seven and boys
grow up to be Maverick in Top Gun.
Where I’m from, cats are better than people.
Where I’m from my mother’s lips, eyebrows, nostrils are pinched
in frustrated concentration
and
to people like her father
sounding too learn-ed
too hifalutin
too ivory-tower academic
is just about the worst thing that could happen to anyone.
Where I’m from, people are down to earth. (What you'd expect
for the center of Google Earth.)
People are good. And people are decent. The best way they know how.
Where I’m from, people don’t lock their doors at night because if some kid
in a hoodie busts in and steals the TV
my mom’ll just call his mom the next morning and say,
“Hey, tell Ricky to bring back the TV.”
Where I’m from, truth is negligible. The best story over the truth, any day.
(We didn’t have a TV. “Open a book,” she’d say.)
Where I’m from, I am Dr. Parham’s daughter, that younger one who was in all them plays and always stuck somewhere
in the middle of the road
in that bright red Jeep
out of gas.
Whatever became of her, anyways?
