where are villains and gothic mystery or tales of virtue

In my own poet's life with ink and talk, 

living today as fully as I'm able, 

I keep circling, reluctantly, my folk,

those whom I might spurn as my own people

if I could just revise my ancestry.

(Where are lyrical heroes, heroines?

Where are villains and gothic mystery

or tales of virtue in the blank margins

of my family script?) My backward look

offers only a scratched plate heaped with meat

and potatoes, and scorn for a fine book

or poem. They revered their balance sheet,

that myth driving their urge to get ahead,

to keep reliably out of the red.

 

[Leslie Schultz, "IV" from 'Taproot: A Crown of Sonnets', in Concertina: Poems]