This-- some un-collected poems, a couple new.
I do feel like you are my family.
And I thank Natalie for that beautiful, beautiful definition
of what family is, because that's really what it is.
Then there's that other family, the one you're born with,
and the one that you go through life with.
And in my part of the woods, which is Akron,
Ohio, and everyone came up from the South kind of en masse
in the '20s.
So every time we meet-- and we usually meet for what I call
the picnic holidays, which are 4th of July and Memorial Day--
whenever we met, everybody suddenly--
well, we're no longer Midwesterners,
let's put it that way.
[LAUGHTER]
"Family Reunion".
"30 seconds into the barbecue, my Cleveland cousins
have everyone speaking Southern, broadened vowels and dropped
consonants, whoops and caws.
It's more osmosis than magic, a sliding thrall back to a time
when working the tire factories meant entire neighborhoods
coming up from Georgia or Tennessee,
accents helplessly intact, while their children, inflections
flattened to match the field they thought they were playing
on, knew without asking when it was safe to roll out a drawl,
just as it's understood 'potluck' means resurrecting
the food we've abandoned along the way for the sake of sleeker
thighs.
I look over the yard to the porch
with its battalion of aunts, the wavering
ranks of uncles at the grill.
Everywhere else, hordes of progeny are swirling,
and my cousins are yakking on as if they were waist-deep
in quicksand but, like the books recommend,
aren't moving until someone hauls them free.
Who are all these children?
Who had them, and with whom?
Through the general coffee tones,
the shamed genetics cut a creamy swath, Cherokee's burnt umber
transposed onto generous lips, a glance flaring gray
above the crushed nose we label Anonymous African.
It's all here, the beautiful geometry of Mendel's peas
and their grim logic.
And though we remain clearly divided on the merits of okra,
there's still time to demolish the cheese grits
and tear into slow-cooked ribs so tender,
we agree they're worth the extra pound or two our menfolk swear
will always bring them home.
Pity the poor soul who lives a life without butter--
[LAUGHTER]
--those pinched knees and tennis shoulders and hatchety smiles."
[LAUGHTER]