Coming Out of Nowhere

Alaska Homestead Poems

Linda Schandelmeier

• Publisher: University of Alaska Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781602233607
• eBook ISBN:
  9781602233614
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

"The earth near our place/ was cradle, / it rocked us— / became our skin. / House doors opened, / spilled us out, / we disappeared into trees— / they clothed us in delirious green. /. . . We knew the song / of this place, made it up, / sang it—"
 
Homestead life is often romanticized as a valiant, resilient family persisting in the clean isolation of pristine wilderness, living off the land and depending only on each other. But there can be a darker side to this existence.

Linda Schandelmeier was raised on a family homestead six miles south of the fledgling town of Anchorage, Alaska in the 1950s and '60s. But hers is not a typical homestead story. In this book, part poetic memoir and part historical document, a young girl comes of age in a family fractured by divorce and abuse. Schandelmeier does not shy away from these details of her family history, but she also recognizes her childhood as one that was unique and nurturing, and many of her poems celebrate homestead life. Her words hint at her way of surviving and even transcending the remoteness by suggesting a deeper level of human experience beyond the daily grind of homestead life; a place in which the trees and mountains are almost members of the family. These are poems grounded in the wilds that shimmer with a mythic quality. Schandelmeier's vivid descriptions of homesteading will draw in readers from all types of lives.

Three

SURVIVAL TACTICS

This was almost the worst year of my life. It was before man walked on the moon. We lived among wild trees. I needed deodorant but was afraid to say so. This was before my parents mentioned body odor, menstruation, or sex. They were divorced. I was still dreaming of being popular. Watergate was years away. No mass transit buses or car I could drive, no boyfriend. Not before my mom said when you turn eighteen, I’ll break your plate. She’d already made a career of suffering. I wasn’t planning on following in her footsteps. You’ve already guessed women’s lib and birth control weren’t topics in our house. No one was home except me, so I slipped out to the road, my babysitting money in my cutoff jeans pocket, stuck my thumb out, caught a ride on the back of a stranger’s Harley. Burned the inside of my knee on the muffler. It was a price I didn’t mind paying. I was keeping an appointment with the rest of my life.

PAINTING THE STONES

Opening the door

to the chicken house

I discover him

stiff and bloodied on the coop floor.

So quiet

I could hear the wind outside.

It seemed unearthly.

I felt a jolt against my ribs

as if something inside me

had shifted.

The other roosters acted like nothing

had happened.

I’d raised him from a chick,

called him Goldy,

his pumpkin-colored feathers

edged in black

so it looked like he wore a lace coat

as he scratched up bugs

in the dirt for the hens.

I didn’t want to touch him,

his strut and verve drained away—

wanted to be remote,

not a coroner, mortician

preacher, gravedigger.

I wrapped his body in burlap

from a feed sack,

dug a hole,

threw in handfuls of fireweed blossoms

loud and magenta,

marked his grave with colored stones

painted from my watercolor box.

They were a eulogy

I didn’t say aloud

because now death had my address.

THE BUTTON BOX

I slip the cardboard box

from the treadle sewing machine drawer.

Snooping they would call it,

but without nearby relatives, family albums,

there’s no other entry

into my parents’ histories.

So, I lift the hinged lid

of Grandpa’s old cigar box

letters, pictures—I imagined those

and jewels maybe,

but it holds only buttons.

Buttons so vivid, the colors

separate me from this drab house

between forest and road.

Explosions of aquamarine, cinnamon,

mulberry, cerulean, vermillion, plum.

I scoop them up, pour them

back and forth between my hands,

listen as they murmur

like water over rocks,

gossip about the shirts

they’ve opened and closed,

my parents who wore them,

waltzing in moonlight so silver

it made a sound.

Dad’s many pledges.

It was an easy vocabulary without hindrances,

but a trick of moonlight.

Unfinished insulation in the passageway,

a plywood floor riddled with knotholes,

the army surplus blankets

on our beds.

Disappointments everywhere,

even the yard—weeds and mud.

Disheveled coops

built from exhausted pallets.

His talk of how he’d bid

on carpet for the living room

at the next surplus sale—

how he’d plant a hedge

of wild cinquefoil,

dug from the forest.

As if they had carpet

or he dug up anything.

As if there was any money,

any will.

He kept up his talk,

his face earnest,

his plans so convincing

I hunted for hope in his words.

I vowed never to live with anyone

capable of so much distortion again,

or in a place

with so many unkept promises

that I tried to keep

whe...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Acknowledgments
• Notes from the Preface