Wherever I Am

By Alison Granucci

                 After Willie Perdomo’s “Where I’m From”

                

If I said I am from the land of underground

eruptions: basalt trapped, fault lines   quartzed when warped   to light

or if I said I am from a glacial gouge, the tougher rock laid down

and cast as a Sleeping Giant, would you

believe   I am from the land of sleeping giants

 

               where I am from, the sleeping giants laid low

               inside the rifts of father until the war he brought home welled out

               inside the erosions of mother, each letdown swallowed with smoke

               inside the barrel’s cold steel before the gun was sparked

 

If I said I am from the body of my mother

and my mother was from the south, would you

believe   I am from the land of South but born North

 

               where I am from, the civil

               war is my inheritance

               Blowing Rock, Dunn, the Smith

               Plantation: sharecroppers

               in the field, tobacco in the barn

               blind woman in a dark room

 

If I said I am from the night sky of aurora borealis, the farthest

south it ever came, just once, as a child, sky rippling red, green

lightclouds pulsing, a dizzying scrim shimmering purple, would you

believe   I am from the land of just once

 

                where I am from, just once

                was not enough

                to be born, I had to do it again

                from a bullet to the head

 

If I said I am from the land of silver-making and the river Quinnipiac

where blood was called Long River, and body Long Land, would you

believe   I am the place of long-water-land, and

 

               wherever I am, my life

               flows red

               straight out

               of Dead Wood Swamp