"I am from" poems

Last week we were asked to write a list poem modeled on those written for the “I am From” project created by George Ella Lyon and Julie Landsman. I can completely see where this could be an exercise for so many things in the classroom: creative writing, public speaking, getting to know yourself and others, being vulnerable. It certainly was so for us, and the poetry of my cohort members was moving and descriptively illuminating. I can, in my own, see both where I have limited my openness and where I have remembered treasures… It isn’t great, but it was fun to jot down. I may polish it up later, but in the interest of transparency, here it my first shot:

---

I am of the basement

I am of the basement

I am of the slow, echoing descent on wooden steps into the dank darkness.

I am of the Lightswitch of Immediate Banishment at the bottom landing that exiles Basementmonsters with an upward flick.

I am of well-window eyes, high on each wall, glassy beyond sobriety, and lidded with old, webby valences, but still watching... watching.

I am of an atmosphere of scents: sawdust, garlic, must, dill, laundry soap, dust.

I am of the goosebumping chill of a stained-rust-red cement floor against a summer-sweaty body.

I am of the perceived security of visible load-bearing pillars and cinderblock walls, and I am of those who sheltered with me, securely, when tornado sirens blared.

I am of the liminal and mysterious:

     laundry chutes,

     dark corners,

     spaces under stairs,

     the midnight depth of the sump,

     and the unknowable world on the other side of the well-windows

I am of treasures found and sometimes shared:

     baskets of polished rocks,

     a freezer full of cow,

     a crock full of pickles,

     a year's worth of ball jarred veg and jam on floor to ceiling shelves.

I am of a quiet classroom filled with unintentional education:

     forts made of sheets over furniture,

     mom's art supplies,

     a pool table and dart board full of physics and geometry,

     an armchair and a stack of books from the bookmobile,

     scraps of wood and my own ball-peen hammer (with secret, hidden screwdriver),

     geology sets, chemistry sets, erector sets,

     and a set of 1953 World Book Encyclopedias which smelled like all the knowledge in the world.

I am of the pause, the mental preparation needed to go back up the stairs, knowing that when the switch is flipped down, the basement belongs to the Basementmonsters...

I, too, may be a Basementmonster.

I am of the basement.

---