Poetry / Kristin LaTour
:: Tucson Snow: A Gen‑X Poem ::
My mom left me alone again, my three-foot tall body itching with prickly heat and boredom, this time by the Salvation Army drop box, church parking lot black top, where discarded belongings were piled in the Tucson sun. I became treasure hunter, digging in the discards, when I discovered snow. A few loose Styrofoam balls the size of rice that swirled up into the breeze off my hand. I found more, a ripped bean bag chair full of it. To me, a child who had only seen snow in a picture book, white spots on a cityscape, this was magic I reached for and lifted again and again, twirling under magical falling snow, a fairy in a tale. My mother returned, belly full of baby sister, grabbed my arm, thumb on bicep, her other four fingers digging into the bone near my armpit, dragging me to the custodian’s office, her growl explaining what this little girl thought to do, pressing broom and dustpan into my arms as she took a plastic garbage bag, marched me back to the mess, white blowing across asphalt. Her remembered snow from Lorain, Ohio winters was burdened by gray clouds, was miserable, drifts to be shoveled in discomfort, her aching back, her father’s white breath telling her to work faster, it’s not getting warmer out, as our backs ached and dripped sweat, our breath invisible and warm, dry as the hills that rose around the cross-topped church as I swept and she scooped. Another moment I made reminding her of her dreams not realized, my wonder bagged up and thrown away.
From the writer
:: Account ::
I’ve been changing as a poet lately, writing more in first person and not hiding behind third person. I’ve never been good at facing my past, at naming what stories are mine. There’s something safe about writing from a distance, creating a persona that makes a shield between the writer and the reader. Just there, I did it again. These poems are all about my childhood, but also about Gen X, my generation, and what meaning I find looking back at memories. There’s also the issue of being middle-aged and memory getting muddled or just disappearing. I find I’m writing more poems about what it means to me, and to others in my generation, to be Gen‑X, and, as the cliché goes, to be ignored or forgotten. While my childhood was not more or less filled with neglect as my peers’ were, I started disassociating when I was really young. I wanted to disappear from my family, school, the world, but I was also anchored to the place I lived, the Sonoran Desert. Growing up in a place so foreign to many readers, there’s a layered lack of association on top of that. I write mostly free verse narrative when I want to tell a story, and I listen as I read aloud for line and stanza breaks. I also use stanza breaks to denote a change in time/memory/location. I like to think of these poems as openings between myself and reader, a way to make a connection. I suppose I write these poems to be seen and heard.
Kristin LaTour’s first full-length collection, What Will Keep Us Alive, is available from Sundress Publications. Her most recent chapbook is Agoraphobia, from Dancing Girl Press. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Rhino, Adroit, Cider Press Review, Tinderbox, and Massachusetts Review and in the anthology Obsession: Sestinas in the 21st Century. She is the founder of the Aurora Writers Workshop, a professor at Joliet Jr. College, and she lives in Aurora, IL.