Where I'm From

Where I’m From #13

By Ann Kathryn Kelly

Inspired by George Ella Lyon

I am from an Irish Clan’s love,

strong as bedrock, deep as ocean,

the baby in the family almost taken,

decades after baby fat grew lean.

(A bleeding brain tumor, caught before bedrock could crumble.)

I am from a surgeon’s scalpel,

my Superman in a cape of blue scrubs,

who outran, outflew, outwitted

red kryptonite inside me.

I am from dusty dirt roads,

a crooked red barn wearing a rust-streaked tin hat.

A tidy white Cape Cod house

on a remote, windswept hill.

The “City of Brotherly Love” in my veins

left behind at age eight,

as the yellow Dodge station wagon

pointed north.

I am from moonbeam coreopsis and

bleeding heart plants that stand tall in my garden.

Arched stems heavy with

hearts of red

that nod to me on a June breeze.

I’m from candlelit nights singing birthday songs.

Small table, voices lifted,

off-key and giddy.

My siblings crowded ‘round, my father’s eyes dancing.

We bang the table in a tribal

whoop at song’s end, as he taught us.

I’m from Leonard Senior and Leonard Junior,

the former quiet and gentle, the latter forever laughing.

Forever loving, from the grave.

I’m from “Eat the sandwich in small bites,” and

“We can overcome anything when we take it in bite-sized pieces.”

My tumor, decades later, picked from the tangles of my brain in pieces.

I’m from Irish Catholics, centuries long.

In our blood, our hearts, breaking our hearts

as the scandal spread and suffocated innocents.

And we turned not the other cheek, but our hearts. Away.

I’m from Philadelphia scrapple,

the unwanted parts of the pig,

crisp skin, gooey center

of goodness and spices and lard.

I’m from my air fryer,

able to leap tall buildings in a bound and

cook just about anything you can dream up.

I’m from my maternal great-grandmother,

washed ashore from County Tipperary to Philadelphia.

Age 13, expected to work 14

-hour days on a cement floor,

a teen laundress in a “big house” on Philly’s

upper-crust Main Line.

And yes, the soldier’s song is true,

t’is indeed “a long way to Tipperary.”

And, from Tipperary. Especially in third-class.

The girl, Elizabeth, who left mother and father,

brothers and sisters, behind on the “old sod.”

The one chosen to accompany a maiden aunt in steerage,

trying for someone’s—anyone’s—definition of a “better life.”

I am from a lineage of Clans.

The Kelly’s, the Meehan’s, the McGee’s, McCusker’s, the McGinley’s.

Preserved in memory, on film, on tintype,

the nooks and crannies of my Victorian home’s shelves filled.

“Is that really tin?”

“Actually, I read somewhere they used thin iron, not tin.”

Paper-slim, muted, brown-edged and blistered.

Prickly, as thumb brushes metal, caressing

a waxed mustache, precisely curled.

The studio backdrop of ferns and high-back, fanned chair

green and mossy, through the passage of time.

The depths of our lineage an ocean bottom, mysterious.

A sunken ship, glimpsed.

Murky. Irish green.

Where to find Ann:

Website: https://www.annkkelly.com/

Where to find Alyson:

Website: https://www.alysonshelton.com

Substack: https://whereimfrom.substack.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/byalysonshelton/