#
When we catch sight of you,
America,
Vulgar like a knuckle sandwich,
Your reach stupendous,
Satellites shouldering your spacious skies -
When we catch sight of you,
O beautiful,
Our heart begins to thump.
Home of the Maidenhair!
Virginia Sweetspire!
It's a funny crowd that roots for the ump.
#
Approaching you, our brain begins to froth,
Purpled by the outbursts from your great and cloven mind.
Approaching you, we feel that staticky grey fuzz that you give off -
Like when we were a child,
Putting a cheek up against our old TV.
We lean in and speak freely.
We sound out the contours of your language:
Tonguing your acronyms, your ethnicities,
Teething your glamour and your glitch,
Inhaling your junkmail and your litterbugs,
Exhaling your theme parks, your xeroxes, your zits.
That’s showbiz.
#
When we departed,
We felt so much like the orphan in the schoolyard,
Stuck among rough anarchy,
Hemmed in by yelps and elbows.
But this time we’re returning
Like an uppercut, knocked hard against the jut of something,
Classic, superior, rising, final,
A sudden hook, a knockout blow.
And this time, we're staying, pushing in like a tourniquet,
The way a desperado might push a desperation up against a hate.
Pressed hard against the dying by the praying
The way a congregant presses god against their pain.
Knuckled down by hope, with hope,
The way a firstborn might knuckle idioms up against a weakness,
The way an urbanite uses television to squash their loneliness.
Waiting for salvation, rags pushed against the injured -
We became the killers of our own beloveds.
Shall we not be their avengers?
#
Reviews
No reviews yet.