These poems are part of the special section, New Poems of U.S. History, reflecting on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence selected by editors Carolivia Herron, Summer Tate, and Robert Bettmann. You can read more about the section on the Day Eight website here.
I read that in Ohio, my native state, only 73%
think they live in the Midwest. Where
on earth do the rest think they are? It must be
that the Northeast longs for New England,
with its white, steepled churches
and calm town greens; it welcomed
settlers from Connecticut to the new Territory
that became the original, the authentic
Midwest: Ohio, Indiana, Michigan,
Illinois, Wisconsin, and a chunk
of Minnesota, east of the Great River.
Southeastern Ohio feels Appalachian
and, unlike in James Wright’s poem,
is trying to escape across the bridge
at Wheeling into West Virginia.
Northwest Ohio, fertile Black Swamp home
of Fallen Timbers that Mad Anthony Wayne
slogged through, remembers its near-war
with Michigan over the border. While
Ohio, the elder, got the boundary it wanted,
its Northwest is sick and tired of
having to run tiled trenches through its fields
to get them drained enough to plant.
In the Southwest, that wants to pack all world’s pork
and boil the rendered lard into soap,
Cincinnati demands its inclined trams back; in a huff,
it’s tempted to take off from its Rome-like Seven Hills
downriver with Huck and Jim, and never return.
If Ohioans can’t show themselves more loyal
than this, I’m going to send them all
to live on the Great Plains until the cold wind
out of Canada blows some sense into them
and they admit that they’re Midwesterners.
Lynn D. Gilbert’s poems, twice nominated for Pushcart Prizes, have appeared in such journals as After Happy Hour Review, Blue Unicorn, carte blanche, The MacGuffin, Ponder Review, Sheepshead Review and Southwestern American Literature. Her poetry volume has been a finalist in the Gerald Cable and Off the Grid Press book contests. A founding editor of Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, she lives in an Austin suburb and reviews poetry submissions for Third Wednesday journal.
Featured image Dougtone, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
