George Ella Lyon

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George Ella Lyon is the author of several books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. She has authored four poetry collections: Many-Storied House (The University Press of Kentucky, 2013), She Let Herself Go (The University Press of Kentucky, 2012), Back (Wind Publications, 2010), and Catalpa (Wind Publications, 1993). In 2015, she was appointed to the position as Kentucky poet laureate. Source

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.

Published:

1999

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Identity

Memory & The Past

Literary Devices:

Allusion

an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference

Repetition

a recurrence of the same word or phrase two or more times

Sensory Detail

words used to invoke the five senses (vision, hearing, taste, touch, smell)