The Upper Peninsula of Michigan

The Upper Peninsula of Michigan
by Ron Reikki

No one cares about the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
so there’s no use in writing a poem. It’s a sort
of damnation, like testing your voice underwater
or starting a war in your basement. But I grew up
in Negaunee, which means I basically grew
up in a muddy field filled with hacked wood
we would shove into hungry chimney mouths,
as hungry as bullets for guns. I think I
am supposed to tell you about my childhood;
it was a bit like the Great Depression, but
my mother says it was more great than sad,
to be warm in the museums of winter and
so much love like porcelain cups, gentle,
on the shelves when you enter, a house, just
us—my mother and me, a town, a life, time.