I'm from the cries of families/ sundered at our southern border/ while Lady Liberty faces a filthy sea. / I'm from "all [white able-bodied well-off hetero] men are created equal" and 'Here/ Puerto Rico, have some paper towels!'//I'm from our Predator-in-Chief/ who brags about grabbing pussy/ and mocks a woman who was sexually abused. //I'm from countries we bombed or clear-cut/ or destabilized to get what we wanted./ I'm from the Seven Deadly Sins/ confused with the American Dream. //I'm from the whole Pilgrim whitewash/ our refusal to admit the land we stole/ the Indians we slaughtered, the Africans/ we chained to build our wealth. I'm from/ their descendants, gunned down on the street. I'm from/ children ripped from their parents' arms/ when the ship docked, at the auction block/ in the field. I'm from their blood and bones/ feeding the ground I stand on.
One tells your future by your palm One tells your present by your feet One frees the current in your spine One sets your pelvis straight & neat One hears the lostness of your days One reads your words and holds them dear One needle-maps the ancient ways That chi flows when the path is clear One springs the lock of your dream One shares the wisdom of the wheel One stands steady as you scream Witnessing a truth that helps you heal One shows a pose to make you strong One leads that pose into a flow One says Let go when you are wrong One loves you more than you can know
Cleaning out the middle left-hand drawer of the desk, I came upon this picture taken several years from now. Some of our clothes look odd, and not all of us are there. The strange thing is that I don’t recall where this is going to be or why we will gather. I can tell somebody has told the least ones to hold still. They look frozen. The rest of us stand tired and smiling. Family features flow through our faces. It’s hard to tell if one will be me.
First my arm wanted to go to the house in Harlan but stopped at the Pineville bridge. I thought I might get something from under that bridge, a lump of concrete or a piece of glass but my arm went on and on into the Tennessee hills, to that graveyard across the way from my Great Aunt Fanny’s daughter’s house. And what I picked up was a clod of red clay from the pile the gravedigger had made, “a right smart of dirt” Fanny’s daughter told him, though she didn’t think he had made the hole deep enough. He insisted it was just right, then told us, “There’s always more dirt comes out of a hole than you would think could be in it.”
George Ella Lyon’s recent poetry collections include She Let Herself Go, Many-Storied House and Voices from the March on Washington, co-written with J. Patrick Lewis. A freelance writer and teacher, Lyon is particularly interested in the poetry of witness. She served as Kentucky Poet Laureate (2015-2016). She is the co-founder, with Julie Landsman, of the I Am From Project, a national project to gather new poetry in response to the troubled state of the nation. See more at https://iamfromproject.com/about/.
Chilean Museum of Pre-Columbian Art (Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino) in Santiago, Chile. Widely regarded as one of the best museums in Latin America, this unique museum houses an impressive collection of artifacts from ancient Central and South America, which underscores the rich cultural diversity and artistic splendor of the Pre-Columbian Americas. Images courtesy of WM Robinson.
