sovay | They've made a home in the borders

Current Music: Lal Waterson & Oliver Knight, "Columbine"

They've made a home in the borders

My poem "Colonial" has been accepted by Mithila Review. There's a strange chime of timing: I wrote it last spring during the protests when the federal government had just designated anti-fascism a form of terrorism, as opposed to the patriotism of attempted coups. The longer fuse was the information about my ancestry which had come to light the previous fall, namely that all my life I had been used to thinking of myself as descended from immigrants on the margins and suddenly there was a recognizable name on the rolls of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636. It does not change my responsibilities to this country's present and future, but it is the reality of the past. I am very pleased that the poem will have this home, especially now.

Threaded | Flat

I wonder if we are cousins way back, I had family in MA at that time (they are Manns, their house is now a museum outside Boston). We had always assumed that the Manns were exiled German Catholics, like the rest of my mother's family, but no, they were very early English colonists. This was fairly entertaining because it scored major points off my Aunt P., who has always been snooty about how on my dad's side we were eligible to join the DAR.

We were over on the second boat after the Mayflower, which is one of those "colonialist history also-rans" situations, I guess.

Congratulations!

Yay poem!

You can't keep on at this pace, you'll need a floofy beverage with an umbrella in it.
*fans you with a large palm leaf*

Congratulations! I was sort of hoping you wouldn't have a whole entire chapbook of Mir Zeynen &c. poems, but in the end I find I don't mind the idea!