Where I Am From...

Idaho

I am from a state where chewing tobacco lines the grates

of drinking fountains in public schools,

where neo-Nazis hold rallies

and convene in a place called a compound,

and folks seem to accept it

because “God damnit, this is Idaho, and people can choose!”

where potatoes frozen and packaged for fast food fornication

line the pockets of Simplot and raise awareness to Idaho’s tuber fame;

where gun shot blasts echoed through each season,

legal or otherwise;

where firecrackers were a rite of passage;

where rivers ran clean, so clean that my father taught me to drink

from them what is pure:

the land which had born him and which I too was born.

Idaho.

This is where I am from.

I am from a state where the sifting sound of gravel roads sung

me to sleep at night;

where I breathed pine pitch from the moment I woke

and found fantasy worlds

that would later fall to the terror of corporate logging;

where a childhood was reared in sunfish

caught from a raft that my brother and I built

like Huck and Jim to escape

to other worlds I discovered in books,

stories born in the lap of my mother,

who read them to me,

who taught me my love for words,

who taught me my love for living and breathing and passion,

who exclaimed, “oooh, oooh, look, it’s a Red-Tailed Hawk!”

for the seven thousandth time, always astounded by their presence;

where rivers became my lullaby;

where silence was sanctuary;

where the earth was paramount:

the soil, the heat, the dust, the wheat, the mountains, the space,

but mostly the silence.

Idaho.

This is where I am from.

I am from a state where words have spoken to me

in whispers and shouts, condemnations and ecstasy;

where novels provided a backdrop for my childhood adventures,

and an escape from an adolescence mired in searing silence,

a culture of racism and ignorance;

where poetry served as therapy;

where poems touched my lips like a lover;

where a self bequeathed hatchet woman cut my poems to shreds

with grace

and made me believe that the land and the words were pure.

Idaho.

This is where I am from.