Migration
I liked to think I sipped my heritage
from a mason jar,
a tobacco drag like hardwood smoke.
Took my vices from a jug
of apple pie moonshine (Mama always told me
eat my fruit). When I’d roll joints,
fingers sticky with his memory,
a hint of old Virginia Shag, I’d say
I smoked my Grandpa’s cough.
Mama hadn’t told me
Grandpa never cured tobacco leaves.
His Virginia was sown in cotton rows, royal
fiber picked from thorns,
to pay for dreams of Syracuse.
When he made it North he gulped
manhattans from tin shakers, and polished his palms
at marble counters to hide sickle scars
to find hands un-blistered
to unravel
the soil
fingers fibers thorns
from which I make my heritage of vices,
this legacy of fields hacked to our liking.
Haines Whitacre is the author of the books Accounts of Wreckage (Winter Texts Press 2019) and Ali Mapu (Edipos 2015) whose poems have appeared in Polyglot and the Lewis & Clark Literary Review. They hold a B.A. in English and Hispanic Studies and currently live in Seattle, where they mentor young athletes and promote accessibility in a sport they love, sailing.