On Taxonomy
by Allison Hedge Coke
Welcome to Poets on the Plains. I'm Allison Hedge Coke, a poet writer born in the Texas Panhandle coming to you via cell phone from Neeksch, Montenegro.
My latest book is Look at This Blue. I'm also the author of Streaming, Burn -- written during the fires at Marfa -- Blood Run, Off-season City Pipe and some other books. I teach for the University of California Riverside and am a member of the Texas Institute of Letters as well as an Associate, Great Plains Fellow.
I'd like to share Taxonomy with you today. This poem is a bit of rushed childhood and here and there we scurried through as we started out in Amarillo.
Taxonomy
Mornings made delirious, scrambling into thread
out from dreaming, wrangling ways past delusion
into streets unpaved, unproven, unmet. It was hard-
over, no sunny side – easy-- and the only yolk -- seated sky—
rose streaming over the lot of us quickened in some
strain no corona could bear resting, lean. Then
the mesa sat standing wayside, case some giants made
their way back into meantime, met us here, met us.
We were tabooed, shunned, mocked and on our mettle
most any pierce of day. Principal struck blows to show we
deserved no mercy. It was splintering. Holes bored blisters
each smacking wave. We were deserving. Wave after wave
first grade took the test out from me. Never did spill again.
no matter the syndrome. We were anything but beggars.
So we scraped by, held up. We flung ourselves into every
angle, withheld our curve. Split loose from whatever held on.
Motown made our mercy. Only soothe in western rooms
rounded in radio waves gleaning out the insides of maternal
mind. Unkind charge firing synapse beyond reasoning goals.
She moved through it like lightning, charging each wave
with serious challenge, but nothing made it bearable and
hands down was just a game called brag. Only hands down we
laid was on ball courts. Home front was daily challenge, there
was nothing certain other than each day just like the last,
Lest they moved you, sent you off to foster somewhere, no
one warned might reckon. Sent you streaming. Gave you up
like paper. Tossed, crumpled, straightened up, and smoothed
out flat. That was that. It was nothing you'd remember, but
we do. Still taste that strangeness surrounding ones who go
between, move throughout the worlds while in this one. No
one lives like we do, least it seems so, always on the mind.
Why? Never time to question and still don't know. Only thing
we know, we are different and not like you and even though
we tried three times harder it never works out right. No,
nothing takes a sting of it, or scent either. We look off,
sound off, give off a presence everyone else knows stay away
and they do, so far from us we walk sideways vanishing
points return to horizon soaking us in, distinguishing us.
Mettle in our mouths as well, steely, and steal we did, still
Do, no one's got more lift than us, no one's got more hunger.
How about the time they made us breakfast, real one, over
that pancake house off of 40, remember? Dad's Christmas
to us right before seeing her in The Pavilion, little dish of
butter looks like ice cream to kids like us. Made the eggs
slide over easy just like he did before the madness. Man this
is rough country, get that straight. Mettle this!
Taxonomy used with permission.
Taxonomy and his companion piece somewhere came about in a flurry of recall -- one of those moments, you know, no one in the room really sees the greater aspects of what made you. In your recognition you still hold some of those elements even now. Somewhere follows up the thread in the next set of years just following.
Taxonomy, the science of classification, categorization, and here leading the values of the multiple coexisting factors, molding and shaping me as a kid, us as kids in my family, the way we were seen and unseen, the way it was for us. This is a true High Plains mix of maladies and a time we were toddlers, preschool, and my first year of school,
The poem begins just outside town, our first place moves through spaces just as we did -- 11th Street, east of Grand by Benton Park, on caliche roads back then. The fostering elsewhere, then back and ends up over on the west side off the new interstate 40. Mom was often in asylums -- Underwood, the brand-new Pavilion and dad working doing all he could to keep us afloat and together when he could. The only good friend he felt comfortable asking over during the hardest times was Gillespie Wilson. He'd bring his whole family over, no problem, whereas most people we knew -- knew of -- wouldn't come at all. They acted like we were radioactive since our mom wasn't well. Of course, we got fostered out from time to time as the social workers didn't think a dad could be alone with kids, despite the fact he was a great dad. Wonderful, really. So, we're sort of in the air, tossed wherever, and just formed a bit differently than other kids around us.
Thank you for being with us for poets on the Plains. I'm Allison Hedge Coke. I began this life in Northwest Texas Hospital on the Panhandle.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke was born in Amarillo, lived/worked in seven High Plains states, and four more Great Plains states and provinces. She lives and works in California, came of age in North Carolina, and has also lived/worked in Hawai‘i, New Mexico, Michigan, New York, Tennessee and Georgia. She’s authored and edited 18 books including Look at This Blue: an assemblage poem and Burn (written at Marfa during the 2011 fires). Acknowledgements include the Thomas Wolfe Prize & Lecture, California Legacy Artist, the George Garrett Award, Fulbright Scholar, the First Jade Nurtured Sihui Female International Foreign Poetry Award, a U.S. Library of Congress Witter Bynner fellowship, and is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. She teaches for the University of California Riverside. Books: https://hedgecoke.com
