Poetry Meme: Where I'm From

Where I'm From

I am from the crumbs of Wonder Bread (“Builds Strong Bodies Twelve Ways”), from Smucker's Strawberry Jam and Chunky peanut butter.

I'm from fish sticks, tuna wiggle, hamburgers and hot dogs and raw milk on my oatmeal.

I am from the one bedroom, third story apartment near the Watergate Hotel, love nest of a May-December marriage.

I'm from the “gruesome twosome” then the “terrifying threesome.” Sunday mornings were reserved for “Fight to The Finish” in my father's bed – a hard way to be roused from a much needed rest.

I am from the hemlocks blowing in the breeze, the home of a coven of crows intent on murder. I have granite in my head and cedars in my heart. “Hidebound” is most often transliterated to “rockbound” in my presence.

I come from stern forbears with big noses, from Stuarts and Holts, from Frickes and Dorothy and Samuel B. Morse.

I am from the sailors and artists conjoined in the snow. Welsh men and Irish women, English and French. American Indian and French Canadian.

From an eight years old chef and a hot mama pilot on Capitol Airlines.

I am from Methodist Deacons and lapsed Anglicans. I shun deities and spit religion out on the ground for good with my pacifier.

I'm from Irish mothers, Anglo-Saxons, Alsatians, and Beserkers from Annapolis; I eat the cockroaches of the sea and ooze whiskey from my pores.

I am partly of the man whose shorts filled with petrol. Descendant of Aunt Townsend, who spent a winter in the Maine woods with two small children, burning whole trees for warmth and hacking away at the frozen moose in the shed until May when the maggots got too thick; the nephew of the robber baron of plastic Mouse Houses™ stealing his mother blind in one eye, and the grandson of the saddest nice man in town (“Why can't you be more like HIM?”).

I am from the frozen north, abandoned, if only temporarily, by all who grew here to adulthood; failed steward of the farm, subject to the adoration of Willow the Wunderhund and a dozen cats, give or take the road kill.

I am a survivor ... of strange men with knives in their teeth and guns in their hands, of stranger men in white coats with knives in their hands carving my heartbreak in my open chest, broken and breathless, of dead progenitors and their mates, orphaned late but hating it the same.

I am secure in the love of a Southern Belle with a fiery temper and sharp-toothed tongue who's fond of cuddles. April Fools are we.

I am from a long line who stop with me.

I am ... but I won't be before so long, but not too soon.

I learned about this from Junebugg. She got it from Donna, who swiped it from Cowpie Patty. It started here and that is where you can find the template with instructions on how to do this. And you are most welcome to play along. Please do, and let me know where I can find out where you're from.