Tribe

Butuki posted about a conversation overheard on a train between two drunk Japanese businessmen -- a commentary on us vs. them, insiders vs. outsiders. This morning I read this poem at Poetry Daily that seems to resonate with that post (tomorrow it will have moved to the archives section):

Tribe

My tribe came from struggling labor
Depression South Eastern Illinois
Just before the southern hills start
To roll toward the coal country
Where the east/west morainal ridges
Of Wisconsin trash pile up
At the bottom of the prairie, socially
A far midwest recrudescence of Appalachia
My grandfather French Quebecois
Master pipefitter in the age of steam
Indian fifty percent, very French
Who didn't derogate himself
As a breed, showed none of those tedious
Tendentious tendencies. Came down
From Chebanse, from the Illinois Central
In Iroquois Country, to the Chicago &
Eastern Illinois line's division at Villa Grove
In one of the Twenties boomlets,
The last precipitous edges of the great devolvement

These forbears on my mother's side
Owned a nice clapboard house in old town
Where I was brought up off and on during
The intensity of the depression, parents
Wandering work search, up and down
The bleak grit avenues of Flint, following
Other exodus relatives, Belgian in-laws
From another French connexion
Michael Moore-land from the beginning
Manmade poisons in the cattle feed way
Before Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease and angry cows —
Governments always conspire against
The population and often
This is not even malice;
Just nothing better to do.

I'm with the Kurds and the Serbs and the Iraqis
And every defiant nation this jerk
Ethnic crazy country bombs —
World leaders can claim
What they want about terror,
As they wholesale helicopters
To the torturers —
               But I'm straight out
Of my tribe from my great grandma Merton
Pure Kentucky English — it would take more paper
Than I'll ever have to express how justified I feel.

Reprinted from Chemo Sábe (Limberlost Press, 2001)
An earlier version appeared in Chicago Review 45:2 (1999)

[snipped details]

Edward Dorn
Chicago Review
Triple issue: Edward Dorn, American Heretic
49:3/4 & 50:1, Summer 2004

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Also, I loved this Stephen Dunn poem at Verse Daily today, The Waiting. But wait, don't miss Ode to American English today at The Writer's Digest.

11:07:49 AM      trackback [] 

Intermittent crankiness

Yesterday I updated the firmware on my wireless router and it magically fixed the problem of intermittent connection with my laptop. Unfortunately, it also made my housemate K’s old computer unable to connect. Of course she discovered this just as my dinner was ready and my Aleve was wearing off so my back was hurting and she had studying she needed to do online, so we got all cranky with each other. We both spent hours last night trying to fix it, taking a break to watch the debut episode of Amor Real on Univision, which promptly had technical difficulties of its own that made much of it unwatchable.

Earlier in the afternoon, my mom called me practically in tears because her anti-depressants aren’t working. She was upset with my dad and wanted me to go up and get her, which I couldn’t do because I was waiting for phone calls – one work-related and the other a call-back from my acupuncturist. I managed to get an appointment at 2pm today because she had a cancellation, so I’ll drive up to my folks’ place after my appointment and stay up there tonight. We can all watch the World Series game and I can spend some more time tomorrow with my mom.

By coincidence, my brother emailed me during the afternoon that he did some research and found that the anti-depressant my mom was on was not, in fact, discontinued as my father seemed to think. Her doctor moved her off of it, even though it was working great for her for many years, for some unknown reason (pharm. company kickback?). So she’s been going through sheer hell trying to get onto one medication then another that don’t work, for apparently no good reason. My father is supposed to call the doctor and try to get her back on what worked for her. I can’t even talk about this; my back is starting to seize up just writing about it.

So last night close to midnight, my housemate came up to tell me that some nice Indian guy named Rodney from technical support was able to get her computer hooked up again (had to uninstall and reinstall the software). She said she was sorry she was cranky. I said I was sorry I was cranky. She said she was crankier. Anyway, that problem solved. Hopefully my back will respond to the treatment today. And I’ll do what I can to try to cheer up my mom tonight and tomorrow. Meanwhile, trying to get some work done and then get packed for overnight…

9:12:43 AM      trackback []