Amy Pickworth: Pick of the Week [ed. Terence Winch]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The Ohio Poem

So even after all this time
when I see a dog that’s eager to bite
I think of my darling angry boys of southeastern Ohio
skinny kids on short chains
shortchanged and wary of the stranger’s hand
Their fury comes to them honest
as the mongrel great-great-grandsons
of unlauded Civil War heroes
who recklessly avoided death
so they could simply turn around and walk back home
shoeless and enraged over the mountains

Christ you poor dumb sweet lugs
now you’re cannon fodder
in countries they never showed us on the map
or working at Walmart or the basket factory
or maybe if you got lucky driving for UPS
You can shoot a deer and
leave its steaming organs in the snow
You’ve had pictures and words
tattooed on your necks
and will not regret it later
Sometimes it’s better when you just drink yourselves
into a great artificial calm

My beautiful sunburned farmhands of Appalachia
my first sweethearts you’ve all gone to seed
But you don’t need Mom to tell you you’re fat
You can see when you’ve gone soft lost your nerve
and your way as the heirs of all those pious Germans
who built modest houses and the furniture in them
checked their traps and stocked their cellars
with fat little apples from trees their fathers grafted
who knew the price by the pound as well as the cost
beat their wives and children into good behavior
and meted out their own pleasures with tweezers
or gorged on them in the dark
Whose boys served front line KP patrol any shit assignment
in Europe or the Pacific or Vietnam so that now as their grandsons
you can sleep on the couch in the waning light of the flat screen

O O O Ohio you were the Mother of Presidents
but now they’re always born someplace else
That industry has been outsourced
to where they make them prettier and cheaper and
no one has to worry about plowing and
salting the driveway

You, men of Ohio, were once my own
I grew tall in the light
of your refrigerators
I licked around the edges
of your ice cream sandwiches
I swayed in your arms at prom
I let a few of you lay me down
on the gold shag carpet
but not pull off my pants because
it wasn’t until after you enlisted
and I went to college that I put out
and then it was for boys
who weren’t from around here

So I’m sorry, Ohio
You were my home and
the home of my mother and her mother
and her mother’s mother before her
and the parking lot where I finally did lose my virginity
to a guitar player who’s now a banker in Tokyo
Your gentle hills once spectacular mountains
worn down over time by the monotony of glaciers
finally dismantled and cast aside for their paltry seams of coal
are still the setting for all my best plane-crash dreams
but in the end I betrayed your sons
          except that one who had the audacity
          to betray me first and for that of course
          I am doomed to love him forever

Sometimes I think I should’ve taken
one of those boys by the hand
          I could’ve found him in the dark by his calluses alone
and we could’ve lit out together

We had our opportunities, you know
“Goddamn it this movie sucks”
he whispered in the flickering light
“Let’s get out of here
Slap me hard across the face
scream ‘You’re an asshole’
run up the aisle
then I’ll come running after you”
God I remember our delight
at how we’d shock them all
But in the end we just stayed
in our seats obediently waiting
till it was over and
they turned the lights back on

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Amy Pickworth is the author of Bigfoot for Women (Orange Monkey Publishing, 2014). “The Ohio Poem” originally appeared in Smartish Pace issue 18.

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Comments

[Clarinda]

Even though I’m old old and
A city girl, this poem resonates powerfully in my head and heart

[Terence Winch]

Thanks for your comment, Clarinda. It's a brilliant poem.

[Stephen Reichert]

Still a great poem!

[Michael]

Brilliant thank you

[Patrick Clancy]

Re a song, it's earworm.

What's the comparable word re a poem?

In a very good way, I cannot let go of THE OHIO POEM.

Thanks for this selection.

[Terence Winch]

Thanks, PJC. It's an inspired poem for sure.

[Terence Winch]

I knew you would dig it.

[Terence Winch]

Yes indeed.

[Tom Davis]

Some truth in this poem, both personal and universal, the way good poetry should be.

[Earle R. Hitchner III]

There are luminous lives and eras packed with utmost art into this poem. I feel I knew all of them, lived all of them, embraced and rejected all of them, mourned and felt relief at their passing, hungered and became sated with them. I didn't think Ohio, as a state or as a state of mind, could contain all of this. I now know I was wrong. Discovering wrong assumptions is as valuable as finding the right ones. Thanks, Amy, for showing the way. And thanks, too, for this: “we could’ve lit out together,” a nimble nod to the last lines in Mark Twain's THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, where American literature first found its footing: “I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before.” Lighting out for the Territory still has appeal.

[Terence Winch]

Thank you, Dr. Hitchner. I knew you would appreciate this wonderful piece of writing.