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117 A primer I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go to be in Michigan. The right hand of America waving from maps or the left pressing into clay a mold to take home from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan forty-three years. The state bird is a chained factory gate. The state flower is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical though it is merely cold and deep as truth. A Midwesterner can use the word “truth,” can sincerely use the word “sincere.” In truth the Midwest is not mid or west. When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio. There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam, which we’re not getting along with on account of the Towers as I pass. Then Ohio goes corn corn corn billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget how to be from Michigan when you’re from Michigan. It’s like riding a bike of ice and fly-fishing. The Upper Peninsula is a spare state in case Michigan goes flat. I live now in Virginia, which has no backup plan but is named the same as my mother, I live in my mother again, which is creepy but so is what the skin under my chin is doing, suddenly there’s a pouch like marsupials are needed. The state joy is spring. “Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball” is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April, when February hasn’t ended. February hicok pages i-120.indd 117 1/7/10 3:23 PM 118 is thirteen months long in Michigan. We are a people who by February want to kill the sky for being so gray and angry at us. “What did we do?” is the state motto. There’s a day in May when we’re all tumblers, gymnastics is everywhere, and daffodils are asked by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes with a daffodil, you know where he’s from. In this way I have given you a primer. Let us all be from somewhere. Let us tell each other everything we can. hicok pages i-120.indd 118 1/7/10 3:23 PM ...

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