Barnacles on My Neck is a “mimic poem” I wrote after reading “The Blue Terrance” by Terrance Hayes, a poem about place and where he came from. It took me a while to find the original poem, since I misplaced, loaned, or gave away the book where I first saw it. Then I had challenges finding the poem online.  It turns out there is more than one poem that Terrance Hayes titled “The Blue Terrance”.  That’s unusual. I will definitely be reading more of his poems. I hope you enjoy my poem about where I come from, below.

See my favorite version of The Blue Terrance here:  http://failbetter.com/17/HayesBlue.php.  See more about Terrance Hayes and his poems here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/terrance-hayes.

Barnacles on My Neck

I come from a long line of old cars driven on wash-board roads.  
The first daughter after the first son, afraid of edges, foreign wars, spiders, 
mean-eyed strangers, new cars, and knocks on the door after dark.  
I believe all the stories of who I was: long pretend hair from tights pulled onto my head, 
friend of all dogs, fearless of nettles, hands high but still stung.  
They say I ran to the wrong mom once.  
Before there were nettles, there were blackberries and there was a beach
plus tideflats with a soft hole of quicksand that we tried to fill with rocks one toss at a time.  
I come from boys, brother, cousins, playing army in the woods, 
a large cedar branch bouncing down for a horse.  
I come from fog horns, salt water, and small-craft warnings.  
I come from rip rap and rip tides, climbing over boulders, 
a railroad track, and then down to the bay with my aunt and cousin.  
We swam in sun-warmed water while the train rattled by,  
Cindy waved her bikini top at the engineer.  
Tell me what you remember of Grandma Seff, her flattened shoes and old dresses 
or Grandma Bess, her bleeding heart that thrived when she threw kitty litter on the plant
that later died after the cat died.  
I come from the rains, wet pastures with rushes that the cows don’t eat.  
I come from creeks pushed into ditches where salmon still spawn.  
I will not evaporate to ocean.  I will not fly with the seagulls.  
I wake up sometimes on this hot inland plateau with barnacles on my neck.  
Where did they bury my placenta, in those days when men were not allowed in the birthing room?  I come blessed, a river of blood to mother, to grandmother, to great grandmother: 
a kindness of strength when needed.  
Yesterday I was nothing but a soggy field,
when I threatened to go out to sea, my father offered his boat.  



[Photo credit Chris Frederick]

Transparent as a gnat’s wing
windsurfers skitter 
across the Columbia 
like a hatch of spring insects 
trying to avoid the trout. 
I worry they’ll hit my windshield.