I was just looking through some old blog posts by my brother, the hillbilly tycoon, when I saw this one about our family. I thought it was so gritty, true, and beautiful. Dan and I have definitely always been the odd ones out in my family. We don’t aspire to live in the suburbs and have a bunch of mediocre crap that we work constantly do get; and that supremely confuses our family. Any kind of behavior that they don’t understand becomes automatically suspicious (which is why they all think my unemployed boyfriend is a drug dealer). So here’s pretty much what any gathering is like on that side of the family….

Thanksgiving in New Richmond

When are you ever graduating? my aunt asked me from under those crayon eyebrows
a mixing bowl of green jello fluff is passed
a family favorite that horrified my Jewish New Jersey ex at first
so appallingly goyishe
evidently
it is: jello, cool whip, and canned pineapple
evidence of my disputed Midwestern-ness
this family never fails
to piss me off
dad is wearing the cosby-show sweater his ex-mother-in-law gave him when i was five
his Holiday uniform for the last decade

Next Spring. i answer
muddy workboots stacked by the door near my chair
the neglected labrador begs for scraps from the porch with his eyes
staring through the sliding door
these people think they have arrived now that my uncle built this new house
but they still drink orange Big K
shoot deer
never travel
don’t read
and think sophistication comes from a car dealership
my childhood remembers as a cornfield

What is your degree going to be in again?
History. i answer
What are you gonna do with that? she frowns
stupidly i joke, Good question!
an intended segue for explaining my grand plan to take over the world using my brain
Well you should have figured that out before you started! she interrupts
dumb bitch has no idea what i do
all she knows is nursing and driving an hour to waste money at the nearest mall
i try to explain about fellowships
graduate programs
tenure
my family eyes me suspiciously over their cranberries and green bean casserole
none of this is registering
You know your cousin really likes his new job in Chicago. she reminds me
he was the Junior Fair King
the heartthrob of 4-H camp
my uncle paid for his O.U. business degree building rich people’s bathrooms and sunporches
we are not as rich as they
my dad can only give me his sweat
when there’s heavy moving
ruptured pipes
or a dead car on the side of the highway
my trust fund is knowledge about how to dig holes expertly

my aunt talks about her new job in Kenwood
she likes it better than her old job at the hospital
doesn’t have to drive through
the ‘slums of Clifton’
my sister and i shoot incensed looks at each other
we have both worked our asses off to live there

i give up on these people
their provincial smugness too stupid to be angry about
i orbit in universes they cannot dream of
my superficial poverty more apparent than their wants
but so much richer
“Get in the car Miss Ceely!”

they will be even more flabbergasted when they hear
that i want to move to the Third World

reblogged from http://whitetrashinsurgentpoetry.blogspot.com/