Elizabeth
Leigh Palmer Hadaway lives in Kingsville, Maryland. She was an
instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University and worked as an
historical interpreter at Agecroft Hall in Richmond, Virginia. She
was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and has received
scholarships to the Breadloaf and Sewanee writer's conference.
Was You Born Here?
'Cause you don't talk like you
was born here, said
my probable fourth cousin,
at least an eighth. Coarse-bred,
Yeats called Cockney Keats. What
he'd think of me I know.
I'm talking American Viscose,
Magic City Mortgage Co.
among my parentage.
But marry that
to old moonshiners who read Cicero.
In nothing flat?
in rounded mountains, knobs
where where's whirr, peaks
of laurel burning into bloom?
I start to speak,
sound like a stranger everywhirr.
The Cure taught me Camus
and still the flatland bouncer asks,
'You're from somewhere, aren't you??
from FIRE BATON
from University of Arkansas Press.
Elizabeth
Leigh Palmer Hadaway lives in Kingsville, Maryland. She was an
instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University and worked as an
historical interpreter at Agecroft Hall in Richmond, Virginia. She
was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and has received
scholarships to the Breadloaf and Sewanee writer's conference.