by Felicia McCarthy
(for Margaret McDonough)
I am from corn, hot Ohio miles of it. And the smell of ether
seeping from a black leather bag stashed on top of the fridge.
I am from pony men and card sharks, drunks and steam engine train drivers.
I’m from blue pencil marks on galley proofs, created on an upright Royal.
I am from screen doors slapping against armies of Canadian soldiers
every June. I am from the dog days of August, the ice storms of winter,
the frozen mud trenched roads of spring.
I am from a lake that died and a river that burned,
from The Erie, The Cuyahoga, and a town called Ashtabula.
I am from ore boats and the fog horns sounding long and lonely
as they herd the hulls of boats into their lanes. I am from the Bascule bridge,
the brick yards, the railway yards, and a back yard that was the lake.
I’m from The Mother of Sorrows, The Confraternity of Christian
Mothers, and the Sisters of the Holy Humility of Mary.
I’m from a ham-fisted man with a fedora and a black skirted priest;
both with whiskey breath and an enviable reach.
I am from among her effects:
The loose powder box made of pasteboard,
stuffed with letters from her Iowa mother,
My dearest Girl, she wrote, and Dear Grand Girl.
I am from Mayo’s Foot of the Reek
to the Allegheny farm on the Black Creek
still walking on from the Great Famine of 1845.
Felicia McCarthy is a poet who has been published in several anthologies. She was born and raised in Ashtabula, though she how lives and works in the West of Ireland.