Where I'm From

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?