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from http://www.kentucky.com/entertainment/books/article44561367.html |
Kentucky's 2015-2016
poet laureate, George Ella wrote "Where I'm From".
Where
I'm From
I am from
clothespins,
from Clorox
and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the
dirt under the back porch.
(Black,
glistening,
it tasted like
beets.)
I am from the
forsythia bush
the Dutch elm
whose
long-gone limbs I remember
as if they
were my own.
I'm from fudge
and eyeglasses,
from
Imogene and Alafair.
I'm from the
know-it-alls
and
the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up!
and Pipe down!
I'm from He
restoreth my soul
with
a cottonball lamb
and
ten verses I can say myself.
I'm from
Artemus and Billie's Branch,
fried corn and
strong coffee.
From the
finger my grandfather lost
to
the auger,
the eye my
father shut to keep his sight.
Under my bed
was a dress box
spilling old
pictures,
a sift of lost
faces
to drift
beneath my dreams.
I am from
those moments--
snapped before
I budded --
leaf-fall from
the family tree.
Be a copycat or an impressionist like Ella Fitzgerald. Revise your initial writing to mimic George Ella Lyon's "Where I'm From". You may choose to use a four stanza structure and create similar metaphors.
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