Where Am I From?
BY SEMAJ BROWN
type: Video
Where I’m From
BY JANUARY G. O’NEIL
I am from north of Boston
standing at the lip of the Atlantic
on land belonging to the Naumkeag
whose name means “fishing place.”
I am from Misery Islands,
–great and little–born out of
earth’s dark dream song, the low tide
creasing the cracked coastline.
I am from Poet’s Hill,
Prides Crossing, Fish Flake Hill,
Gloucester Crossing, Goat Hill,
Montserrat, Rial Side, The Cove.
I commute with the gulls and plover
that inhabit lands once home
to tanneries, mills, merchants,
seamstresses, domestics, and the enslaved.
I am from a history we’ve built together.
I am its industry. There is no more perfect union
than the archive of birches and maples
that preserve our distractions and our rhapsody.
Perhaps I belong to this place more than
it belongs to me. The left coast
on my side. Tumble of sea glass.
Waves of red algae under the song
of sky. In between the grit
there is more grit, the tough
leather of a place rediscovering itself.
I am what the water whispers.
Ode to the Fish
BY ELLEN BASS
Nights when I can’t sleep
I listen to the sea lions
Barking from the rocks off the lighthouse
I look out the black window into the black night
And think about fish stirring the oceans
Muscular tuna
Their lunge and thrash turning the water
Whipping up a squall, storm of hunger
Hering cruising
River of silver in the sea
Wide as a lit city
And all the small breaths
Pulse of frilled jellyfish
Thrust of squid
Frenzy of krill
Transparent skin glowing green with the glass shells of diatoms
Billions swarming up the water column each night
Gliding down at dawn
They’re the greased motor that powers the world
Shipping heat to the arctic
Hauling cold to the tropics
Currents unspooling around the globe
My room is so still
The bureau, lifeless
And on it, intert, the paraphernalia of humans
Keys, coins, shells that once rocked in the tides
Opalescent abalone, pearl earrings
Only the clocks sea green numerals
Register the small changes
And shadows the moon casts
Fan of maple branches
Tick across the room
But beyond the cliffs a blue whale sounds and surfaces
Cosmic ladle scooping the icy depths
And arteries so wide I could swim through
Into its thousand pound heart
Where I’m From
BY TYLER J. MEIER
I am from the splendor of cut timothy
The place where we stack the summer
And squares
On our wobbly wagons
And wheel them into the cave mouths
Of our barns.
I am from the swallows
Circling as if the afternoon were somehow worthy of a halo
I am from silos and slow moving vehicles and one day sliding
Into another
I am from the man who feels he has a shimmering maple
Inside him
I am from the space between things
The four seasons and all their splendor
The bottom
Of the casserole
I am from the mud
And the abundance
Of tomatoes
The dance of tassels on row after row after row
From the Scioto which breeches once a season
Painting what it can with itself
From the last leg
And the long cut
And the lowdown
From a soybean like a prayer
I’m from everywhere I’ve been
But especially from there