Artifact

In one class I'm taking, we have to write a poem about ourselves...a poem that the professor calls an "artifact"; a term said professor did not bother to define.  That bothers me, because I'm such an academia-nerd that I need unusual or unusually-used terms to be defined.  A dictionary definition of artifact reads: An object produced or shaped by human craft, especially a tool, weapon, or ornament of archaeological or historical interest.  I'm going to assume this is what professor meant.  However, my poem is not a tool and I sincerely hope it's not a weapon.  As to it's being an ornament of any kind of interest, I will have to leave to others to decide.  At any rate, I wrote a free-form poem about myself.  Here it is.

I am from tarheels,

From basketball and tobacco.

But I matriculated there from tides and tigers

(Crimson, orange,

Foothills and deep South).

I am from the American and

Industrial Revolutions,

With lost battles and textile mills,

That make public parks and winter coats.

I am from Cheerwine and Joe Camel,

But I spent dedicated years with the Marlboro Man,

In mountains and along triple coasts

That make graveyards under water.

I am from the pirates and the draft-dodgers,

The Lunch Counter Heroes

And the Wizard of Oz Populists.

I am from lilted l’s

And the halfway drawls

And the pseudo-yankee nasals.

I am from high school jazz band concerts

Framed by New Deal murals

And marching in rain and mud to revamped disco.

I am from handwritten high school English papers

And paper-card catalogs

And corded phones with answering machine boxes

And Number Munchers

And getting my first email in college.

I have traveled from “I wish I had a pager too”

To “I’ll never use a cell phone”

To “I need to check my texts during this show.”

I have been a member of Skipping School

And Sneaking Into Night Clubs

And Carolina Bible Camp

And Rainbow Of Christians.

I heard the songs called “sit up straight”,

“be quiet”

“raise your hand” and

“pay attention”

And along the way I forgot the tune of these

While changing my address from:

What Do I Want

To:

I’ll Make What I Want

And in the moving van, I packed:

One grandfather’s tuneless whistle

Two grandmothers’ home cooking

And

One grandfather’s stubborn energy

And took these with me on the family highway of collective independence.