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Creation Myth
I'm the great-grandson of a sheep farmer,
child of sumacs, trash trees shedding their ancient scales.
I'm drawn from fair grass on the north end, my molecules
spat from coal and cattle, the Indiana dusk.
I'm notes scrawled on freezer paper,
the one looped oven mitt Aunt Bev crocheted
while the baby lay feverish in its crib. I rise
from a day gone thin as Cousin Ceily,
who wore her cancer wigs to church.
I come from boys unfastening in the 4-H bathroom,
the stink of urinal cakes, dirty hands that scratched an itch.
I breathe in arc welders and air compressors.
I breathe out milk leaking from nurse cows,
Uncle Jake's spoiled old bitches. I'm run through
with moths and meth labs, a child of the KKK,
men who lynched Tom Shipp from a split
oak in Marion, August 1930. My cells
carry his shadow swaying over uncut grass.
They carry my second third cousin
cheering in the back. I rise from aphids
in honeysuckle, egg yolks flecked with blood.
Born one humid summer night, my body hums
like a black cricket, transmitting August
across the fields. I sing till my throat bleeds. I smoke
like a pan of scorched sugar. I'll never forget
the miracle of firecrackers, freezer meat, murky
gray lemonade. I'm born to thunder
in the veins, a child of form, a rusted gasket ring, some
disenchanted thing, the promise of a worm.
”
”