Even artichokes have hearts

In an attempt to outrun the emotional onslaught of too many goodbyes too soon, I came back to Mississippi on Tuesday under the pretenses of celebrating a friend's birthday then attending a wedding this weekend. Well, I guess those aren't total pretenses, because they are true. I celebrated a friend's birthday on Tuesday night, and I'm attending a wedding tomorrow. But I sure as hell haven't outrun the heartache.

With so much going for me, so much in the works for my future, I should be plumb ashamed that I pine over the dissolution of my favorite Grad School Group, that I can't help but feel like things Will Never Be The Same. I know things won't be the same, but they'll get better. They always get better, and I always find myself somehow the happiest I've ever been. It's really the best place to find oneself.

But still, for now, I'm sulky that my friends are gone, and I'm doing something about it: calling and texting too much, spending too much time out on the town with other friends, not returning emails. These are my coping mechanisms, y'all. What are yours?

In other news, my poem "When Boys Discovered Flowers Would Get Them Into Girls' Pants" has been selected for publication in the upcoming anthology, Splinter Generation. Check it out, and many thanks to Steph for sending me along the call for submissions.

"Let us all be from somewhere"

Anyone who has known me for more than five minutes (or has read this blog for more than five posts) knows that for quite some time now I've been preoccupied with the ideas of home, place, and where I'm from.  I am from Mississippi.  That's where my people are, that's where I was raised.  This is something I'm prouder than ashamed of, though I've apologized for my Deep South roots too many times before.  No more.

When I moved away to college, I resented Arkansas until I loved it and began to resent Mississippi.  A bad thing indeed when one resents his home.  

When I finally became well-versed in Natural State, felt pride in calling myself Arkansan, I up and left that home behind for the long, skinny state of Tennessee.  Repeat resentment cycle.

I'm an East Tennessean now, by way of Central Arkansas.  My heart will always belong to Northwest Mississippi, as well as every other place I will live.  Let us all be from somewhere, the more somewheres the better.   I think, though, my somewhere will always be a nowhere place just south of the Tennessee state line.  

A Primer

I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go

to be in Michigan. The right hand of America

waving from maps or the left

pressing into clay a mold to take home

from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan

forty-three years. The state bird

is a chained factory gate. The state flower

is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical

though it is merely cold and deep as truth.

A Midwesterner can use the word “truth,”

can sincerely use the word “sincere.”

In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.

When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.

There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life

goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,

which we’re not getting along with

on account of the Towers as I pass.

Then Ohio goes corn corn corn

billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget

how to be from Michigan when you’re from Michigan.

It’s like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.

The Upper Peninsula is a spare state

in case Michigan goes flat. I live now

in Virginia, which has no backup plan

but is named the same as my mother,

I live in my mother again, which is creepy

but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,

suddenly there’s a pouch like marsupials

are needed. The state joy is spring.

“Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball”

is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,

when February hasn’t ended. February

is thirteen months long in Michigan.

We are a people who by February

want to kill the sky for being so gray

and angry at us. “What did we do?”

is the state motto. There’s a day in May

when we’re all tumblers, gymnastics

is everywhere, and daffodils are asked

by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes

with a daffodil, you know where he’s from.

In this way I have given you a primer.

Let us all be from somewhere.

Let us tell each other everything we can

Bob Hicock