Poem: Pequaming, MI

Pequaming, MI is situated in the Upper Peninsula. The tiny unincorporated town was founded in 1877 and was once a booming community where there was a successful saw mill. In the 1920s Henry Ford opened up a factory and also owned a white bungalow on Lake Superior. Today there is a marina and an abandoned post office and an old Scandinavian cemetery.

Pequaming is Chippewa meaning a narrow neck of land almost surrounded by water. My grandmother grew up in Pequaming and I have loved visiting this very ghost-like town. I spend a lot of time in the Upper Peninsula (in L'Anse, in Skanee, and in Pequaming) and this poem, while not non-fiction, is an inspiration of my time spent there). My uncle, who has taken me on many adventures through the woods on the great lake, has inspired this poem as well.

This poem embodies my fascination of nature, of birth, of the "native" quality of life in the Upper Peninsula. Again, this is a first draft of a poem, a work in progress.

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[The night before you helped me find old wool mittens, two pairs of socks and a hat. We laid]

The night before you helped me find old wool mittens, two pairs of socks and a hat. We laid them out on my plaid bedspread. Even though it was summer you said the sun was lazier up here, colder. More distant. But just a few hours into the afternoon, you warned, our faces would turn red and freckly.

We walked for minutes or hours or that in-between time that doesn’t really exist - like the slow crunch of morning grass. You grunted. I hummed. We picked up soda bottles and candy wrappers and kept them in a bag that hung from your belt loop. Hunters and gatherers.

The early morning smelled of pine and wet dirt. You said that’s what an open grave smells like - a wound in the dirt. We were being buried alive with the smell. The air hung heavy like the curtains on your windows. We were being buried alive.

Your hands were a vice against
my shoulders. All I remember is:
dirty fingernails
and that freckle right below your
knuckle that looks like a ship’s
anchor. We walked into the woods
crouched low in the mud and waited.
Together, you said, we would see
what our mothers meant by the miracle
of birth: pain, joy, survival.

A woman deer,
I called her. She looked
like a heaving monster -
hungry. Angry.
No. You said, a doe.
A doe is not a woman
but a ghost. You said every woman dies.
And their souls crawl into
the hides of deer like fleas burrow
into the matted fur in winter.
They claw their way through bone
and muscle and plant themselves
in the warm curving bellies of does.

It happened faster than I imagined. She screamed and you smiled. I smiled. There was more blood than I expected.

The smell was that of an open wound,
an open grave. A mix of dead leaves,
flowers in bloom and blood.
More than blood, you said.
It is a desperate life-giving mess.
A miraculous disaster.

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There are a few defining qualities of my poetry - repetition, slant rhymes, ambiguous characters (you/me/I/we). Pay special attention to the relationship of I/you.