46 America poems

Is anything central? Orchards flung out on the land, Urban forests, rustic plantations, knee-high hills? Are place names central? Elm Grove, Adcock Corner, Story Book Farm? As they concur with a rush at eye level Beating themselves into eyes which have had enough Thank you, no more thank you. And they come on like scenery mingled with darkness The damp plains, overgrown suburbs, Places of known civic pride, of civil obscurity. These are connected to my version of America But the juice is elsewhere. This morning as I walked out of your room After breakfast crosshatched with Backward and forward glances, backward into light, Forward into unfamiliar light, Was it our doing, and was it The material, the lumber of life, or of lives We were measuring, counting? A mood soon to be forgotten In crossed girders of light, cool downtown shadow In this morning that has seized us again? I know that I braid too much on my own Snapped-off perceptions of things as they come to me. They are private and always will be. Where then are the private turns of event Destined to bloom later like golden chimes Released over a city from a highest tower? The quirky things that happen to me, and I tell you, And you know instantly what I mean? What remote orchard reached by winding roads Hides them? Where are these roots? It is the lumps and trials That tell us whether we shall be known And whether our fate can be exemplary, like a star. All the rest is waiting For a letter that never arrives, Day after day, the exasperation Until finally you have ripped it open not knowing what it is, The two envelope halves lying on a plate. The message was wise, and seemingly Dictated a long time ago, but its time has still Not arrived, telling of danger, and the mostly limited Steps that can be taken against danger Now and in the future, in cool yards, In quiet small houses in the country, Our country, in fenced areas, in cool shady streets.

the trapdoor is closed; am finite again, but a moment ago—levitation! purple lights the bluewater bridge turned on the oil- black river st clair became fuel for the nightfishers there it was the dream of a memory or the memory of a dream that dumped me below a window, watching a woman change into a man. she entered his dairy log:at first all the world was america and didn’t that suck, he thunk, and strunk his cunk against an overwrought iron fence. they stood waiting like that photograph of the bootblack jack and the aristocrat looking away from her window at a fact well worth recording—Alexander Graham Bell wanted to call his daughter Photophone. between the forest and the gander i hand her over to Metacomet. yes i certainly did. and King Philip sayeth unto me: nature denatured thee friction alone makes her come therefore i need some more before you make me wear’um pants. O failed invention! where’d you get that voice? refusing to come to a particular point, castration finally made sense.

Imagine a child from Virginia or New Hampshire Alone on the prairie eighty years ago Or more, one afternoon—the shaggy pelt Of grasses, for the first time in that child’s life, Flowing for miles. Imagine the moving shadow Of a cloud far off across that shadeless ocean, The obliterating strangeness like a tide That pulls or empties the bubble of the child’s Imaginary heart. No hills, no trees. The child’s heart lightens, tending like a bubble Towards the currents of the grass and sky, The pure potential of the clear blank spaces. Or, imagine the child in a draw that holds a garden Cupped from the limitless motion of the prairie, Head resting against a pumpkin, in evening sun. Ground-cherry bushes grow along the furrows, The fruit red under its papery, moth-shaped sheath. Grasshoppers tumble among the vines, as large As dragons in the crumbs of pale dry earth. The ground is warm to the child’s cheek, and the wind Is a humming sound in the grass above the draw, Rippling the shadows of the red-green blades. The bubble of the child’s heart melts a little, Because the quiet of that air and earth Is like the shadow of a peaceful death— Limitless and potential; a kind of space Where one dissolves to become a part of something Entire ... whether of sun and air, or goodness And knowledge, it does not matter to the child. Dissolved among the particles of the garden Or into the motion of the grass and air, Imagine the child happy to be a thing. Imagine, then, that on that same wide prairie Some people are threshing in the terrible heat With horses and machines, cutting bands And shoveling amid the clatter of the threshers, The chaff in prickly clouds and the naked sun Burning as if it could set the chaff on fire. Imagine that the people are Swedes or Germans, Some of them resting pressed against the strawstacks, Trying to get the meager shade. A man, A tramp, comes laboring across the stubble Like a mirage against that blank horizon, Laboring in his torn shoes toward the tall Mirage-like images of the tilted threshers Clattering in the heat. Because the Swedes Or Germans have no beer, or else because They cannot speak his language properly, Or for some reason one cannot imagine, The man climbs up on a thresher and cuts bands A minute or two, then waves to one of the people, A young girl or a child, and jumps head-first Into the sucking mouth of the machine, Where he is wedged and beat and cut to pieces— While the people shout and run in the clouds of chaff, Like lost mirages on the pelt of prairie. The obliterating strangeness and the spaces Are as hard to imagine as the love of death ... Which is the love of an entire strangeness, The contagious blankness of a quiet plain. Imagine that a man, who had seen a prairie, Should write a poem about a Dark or Shadow That seemed to be both his, and the prairie’s—as if The shadow proved that he was not a man, But something that lived in quiet, like the grass. Imagine that the man who writes that poem, Stunned by the loneliness of that wide pelt, Should prove to himself that he was like a shadow Or like an animal living in the dark. In the dark proof he finds in his poem, the man Might come to think of himself as the very prairie, The sod itself, not lonely, and immune to death. None of this happens precisely as I try To imagine that it does, in the empty plains, And yet it happens in the imagination Of part of the country: not in any place More than another, on the map, but rather Like a place, where you and I have never been And need to try to imagine—place like a prairie Where immigrants, in the obliterating strangeness, Thirst for the wide contagion of the shadow Or prairie—where you and I, with our other ways, More like the cities or the hills or trees, Less like the clear blank spaces with their potential, Are like strangers in a place we must imagine.

The American eagle is not aware he is the American eagle. He is never tempted to look modest. When orators advertise the American eagle’s virtues, the American eagle is not listening. This is his virtue. He is somewhere else, he is mountains away but even if he were near he would never make an audience. The American eagle never says he will serve if drafted, will dutifully serve etc. He is not at our service. If we have honored him we have honored one who unequivocally honors himself by overlooking us. He does not know the meaning of magnificent. Perhaps we do not altogether either who cannot touch him.

O! say can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hail'd at the twilight's last gleaming, Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there — O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave? On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep, Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes, What is that which the breeze o'er the towering steep, As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses? Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam, In full glory reflected now shines on the stream — 'Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave. And where is that band who so vauntingly swore That the havock of war and the battle's confusion A home and a country should leave us no more? Their blood has wash'd out their foul foot-steps' pollution, No refuge could save the hireling and slave, From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave; And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave. O! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand Between their lov'd home, and the war's desolation, Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the heav'n-rescued land Praise the power that hath made and preserv'd us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto — "In God is our trust!" And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

The American common is no collective or princedom but privacies of need & pleasure as they intersect in public spaces, tho the insufferable powers that be breed their plots behind our backs, thinking us witless, seemingly blind to their afflicted intentions, just a bunch of demographic motormouths & screw-ups to be targeted by commodities traders & search engines— a marketing niche for every need, stereotypes tagged by algorithms—here is a typical team of baton twirlers in an airport bar, each of them clad in foxy red track suits & tuned-in to the dollhouse stimulations of pigeon-talking sales reps;there is a previously undetected aggregation of retirees, evangelical camp kids, kickass bowlers, and mothy nuns in starched wimples, for whom the news of the day means the aging boy-man Hugh Grant's fear of double chins—neither of these or any other data dump entirely false, but so narrow-minded sometimes as to lose sight of us entirely: the midtown lady in Capris, a four-square surgeon off-duty & headed out to play poker, the plumber fly-fishing by the river— a sky of twilight slate now—not a word written on it.

1 Some say that Chattanooga is the Old name for Lookout Mountain To others it is an uncouth name Used only by the uncivilised Our a-historical period sees it As merely a town in Tennessee To old timers of the Volunteer State Chattanooga is “The Pittsburgh of The South” According to the Cherokee Chattanooga is a rock that Comes to a point They’re all right Chattanooga is something you Can have anyway you want it The summit of what you are I’ve paid my fare on that Mountain Incline #2, Chattanooga I want my ride up I want Chattanooga 2 Like Nickajack a plucky Blood I’ve escaped my battle near Clover Bottom, braved the Jolly Roger raising pirates Had my near miss at Moccasin Bend To reach your summit so Give into me Chattanooga I’ve dodged the Grey Confederate sharpshooters Escaped my brother’s tomahawks with only Some minor burns Traversed a Chickamauga of my own Making, so You belong to me Chattanooga 3 I take your East Ninth Street to my Heart, pay court on your Market Street of rubboard players and organ Grinders of Haitian colors rioting And old Zip Coon Dancers I want to hear Bessie Smith belt out I’m wild about that thing in Your Ivory Theatre Chattanooga Coca-Cola’s homebase City on my mind 4 My 6th grade teacher asked me to Name the highest mountain in the world I didn’t even hesitate, “Lookout Mountain” I shouted. They laughed Eastern nitpickers, putting on the Ritz laughed at my Chattanooga ways Which means you’re always up to it To get to Chattanooga you must Have your Tennessee “She has as many lives as a cat. As to killing her, even the floods have failed you may knock the breath out of her that’s all. She will re- fill her lungs and draw a longer breath than ever” From a Knoxville editorial— 1870s 5 Chattanooga is a woman to me too I want to run my hands through her Hair of New Jersey tea and redroot Aint no harm in that Be caressed and showered in Her Ruby Falls That’s only natural Heal myself in her Minnehaha Springs 58 degrees F. all year Around. Climb all over her Ridges and hills I wear a sign on my chest “Chattanooga or bust” 6 “ HOLD CHATTANOOGA AT ALL HAZARDS ”—Grant to Thomas When I tasted your big juicy Black berries ignoring the rattle- Snakes they said came to Cameron Hill after the rain, I knew I Had to have you Chattanooga When I swam in Lincoln Park Listening to Fats Domino sing I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill on the loudspeaker I knew you were mine Chattanooga Chattanooga whose Howard Negro School taught my mother Latin Tennyson and Dunbar Whose Miller Bros. Department Store cheated my Uncle out of What was coming to him A pension, he only had 6 Months to go Chattanoooooooooooooooooga Chattanoooooooooooooooooga “ WE WILL HOLD THIS TOWN TILL WE STARVE ”-Thomas to Grant 7 To get to Chattanooga you must Go through your Tennessee I’ve taken all the scotsboros One state can dish out Made Dr. Shockley’s “Monkey Trials” The laughing stock of the Nation Capt. Marvel Dr. Sylvanias shazam Scientists running from light- ning, so Open your borders. Tennessee Hide your TVA DeSota determined, this Serpent handler is coming Through Are you ready Lookout Mountain? “Give all of my Generals what he’s drinking,” Lincoln said, when the Potomac crowd called Grant a lush 8 I’m going to strut all over your Point like Old Sam Grant did My belly full of good Tennessee Whiskey, puffing on A.05 cigar The campaign for Chattanooga Behind me Breathing a spell Ponying up for Appomattox!

The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep, The thought of what America, The thought of what America, The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation Troubles my sleep. Nunc dimittis, now lettest thou thy servant, Now lettest thou thy servant Depart in peace. The thought of what America, The thought of what America, The thought of what America would be like If the Classics had a wide circulation . . . Oh well! It troubles my sleep.

When is a poem one word? Even at 17 he was Baraka on the court, Coltrane gold toned, a kind of running riff, more than boy-child, man-child, he was one word like Prince. How back in those drunken days when I still ran in bars & played schoolyard ball & wagered fives & tens, me & my colleague the psych-prof drove across Eastern Ohio just to see this kid from powerhouse St. Vincent, grown out of rust-belt-bent-rims, tripped with the hype & hope & hip hop blaring from his headphones, all rubber soled & grit as the city which birthed him. We watched him rise that night scoring over 35, drove back across the quiet cut cornfields & small towns of Ohio, back to the places where we slept knowing that Jesus had been reborn, black & beautiful with a sweatband crown rimming his brow. He was so much more than flipping burgers & fries, more than 12-hour shifts at the steel plant in Cleveland. More than the shut-down mill in Youngstown. More than that kid selling meth in Ashtabula. He was every kid, every street, every silo, he was white & black & brown & migrant kids working farms. He was the prince of stutter-step & pause. He was the new King. We knew he was coming back the day after he left his house in Bath Township. He never sold it. Someone fed his fish for years. Perhaps our hope? Fuck Miami. Leave Wade to wade through the Hurricane rain. LeBron is remembering that woman washing the linoleum floor, that man punching his punch card. He drives a Camaro, the cool kid Ohio car driving through any Main Street. He is the toll-taker, & he is the ticket out. He keeps index cards documenting his opponents’ moves. One leans forward before he drives. One always swipes with his left hand. The details like a preacher studying the gospel. He studies the game like a mathematician conjugating equations, but when he moves he is a choreography, a conductor passing the ball like a baton. He is a burst of cinders at the mill. He is a chorus of children calling his name. The blistered hands of man stacking boxes in Sandusky, the long wait for work in Lorain. A sapling bends & reaches in all directions before it becomes a tree. A ball is a key to a lock. A ball is the opposite of Glock. America who sings your praises, while tying the rope, everyone waiting for Caesar to fall, back-stabbing media hype city betrayed by white people with racist signs. I watch the kids play ball in the Heights, witness this they say. We will rise. I watched LeBron arrive & leave, I walked, I gave up drinking as he went off & won a ring. The children’s chorus calls out sing brother, sing. Everything is black. Storm clouds gather out on Lake Erie. But the old flower-hatted women at the Baptist church are heading out praise cards, registering teenagers to vote. To turn a few words into a sentence. He is a glossary of jam, & yes he is corporate chugging down green bubbly Sprite, running in Beats head phones, he is Dunkin his donut, he is Nike, witness, ripped. On a spring day in Akron a chorus of children is chanting his name on the court by the chain-link fence. He is forged steel, turning his skinny body into muscle, years of nights lifting, chiseling, cutting, studying. Watching the tape. To make a new kind of sentence. He is passing out T-shirts, this long hot bloody summer he was returned to the rusted rim along the big lake. He is stutter-step. He is spinning wheel. He has a cool new hat. He is speaking of dead black children. He is giving his time. To make the crowd sway like wind through a field of corn. Does LeBron think of dying? Does the grape think of dying as it withers on the vine by the lake? Or does it dream of the wine it will become? He is wearing a shirt that says I Can’t Breathe. They said he was arrogant. I said he was just Ohio. He married his high school sweetheart. Bravado laid out on the court. No back down, he is Biggie with a basketball inside of a mic, no ballistics, just ballet. He is Miles Davis cool, quietly cerebral, turning his back, tossing up chalk like blue smoke, blue notes, blues. He is Akron, Columbus, he is heart & Heat turned to lake effect blizzards, freighters frozen in ice, looking for work & no money to eat. He is Ashtabula & Toledo. He is carrying so many across the river, up through Marietta. The grapevines are ripe in Geneva. He returns, Man-child, Man-strong, Man-smart, Man- mountain, Mansfield to East Akron, minus into Man, or should we say Mamma raised? Single mother fed, shy child, quiet child who grew, who suffered & taught his body to sing, his mother worked how many shifts, doing this, doing that, never gave up for her son. He is third shift at the rubber plant in winter, he is farm hands & auto parts piecework & long nights the men at the bar, eyes on the television. The lake tonight is black as newly laid asphalt. There are no ellipses. He is turning paragraphs into chapters. Long ago the hoop Gods made this deal at the crossroads, Old Scratch is flipping the pages of his program & waiting high in the stands—to belong to a place most people would call nowhere, to show the world how tough we truly are, twelve-hour shifts at the Rubber plant in Akron. How he is, how he is a part of this asphalt court we call Ohio, & how we suffer, & how we shine.

At night the states I forget them or I wish I was there in that one under the Stars. It smells like June in this night so sweet like air. I may have decided that the States are not that tired Or I have thought so. I have thought that. At night the states And the world not that tired of everyone Maybe. Honey, I think that to say is in light. Or whoever. We will never replace you. We will never re- place You. But in like a dream the floor is no longer discursive To me it doesn’t please me by being the vistas out my window, do you know what Of course (not) I mean? I have no dreams of wake- fulness. In wakefulness. And so to begin. (my love.) At night the states talk. My initial continuing contr- diction my love for you & that for me deep down in the Purple Plant the oldest dust of it is sweetest but states no longer how I would feel. Shirt that shirt has been in your arms And I have that shirt is how I feel At night the states will you continue in this as- sociation of matters, my Dearest? down the street from where the public plaque reminds that of private loving the consequential chain trail is matters At night the states that it doesn’t matter that I don’t say them, remember them at the end of this claustro- phobic the dance, I wish I could see I wish I could dance her. At this night the states say them out there. That I am, am them indefinitely so and so wishful passive historic fated and matter- simple, matter-simple, an eyeful. I wish but I don’t and little melody. Sorry that these little things don’t happen any more. The states have drained their magicks for I have not seen them. Best not to tell. But you you would always remain, I trust, as I will always be alone. At night the states whistle. Anyone can live. I can. I am not doing any- thing doing this. I discover I love as I figure. Wed- nesday I wanted to say something in particular. I have been where. I have seen it. The God can. The people do some more. At night the states I let go of, have let, don’t let Some, and some, in Florida, doing. What takes you so long? I am still with you in that part of the park, and vice will continue, but I’ll have a cleaning Maine. Who loses these names loses. I can’t bring it up yet, keeping my opinions to herself. Everybody in any room is a smuggler. I walked fiery and talked in the stars of the automatic weapons and partly for you Which you. You know. At night the states have told it already. Have told it. I know it. But more that they don’t know, I know it too. At night the states whom I do stand before in judgment, I think that they will find me fair, not that they care in fact nor do I, right now though indeed I am they and we say that not that I’ve erred nor lost my way though perhaps they did (did they) and now he is dead but you you are not. Yet I am this one, lost again? lost & found by one- self Who are you to dare sing to me? At night the states accompany me while I sit here or drums there are always drums what for so I won’t lose my way the name of a personality, say, not California I am not sad for you though I could be I remember climbing up a hill under tall trees getting home. I was going to say that the air was fair (I was always saying something like that) but that’s not it now, and that that’s not it isn’t it either At night the states dare sing to me they who seem tawdry any more I’ve not thought I loved them, only you it’s you whom I love the states are not good to me as I am to them though perhaps I am not when I think of your being so beautiful but is that your beauty or could it be theirs I’m having such a hard time remembering any of their names your being beautiful belongs to nothing I don’t believe they should praise you but I seem to believe they should somehow let you go At night the states and when you go down to Washington witness how perfectly anything in particular sheets of thoughts what a waste of sheets at night. I remember something about an up-to-date theory of time. I have my own white rose for I have done something well but I’m not clear what it is. Weathered, perhaps but that’s never done. What’s done is perfection. At night the states ride the train to Baltimore we will try to acknowledge what was but that’s not the real mirror is it? nor is it empty, or only my eyes are Ride the car home from Washington no they are not. Ride the subway home from Pennsylvania Station. The states are blind eyes stony smooth shut in moon- light. My French is the shape of this book that means I. At night the states the 14 pieces. I couldn’t just walk on by. Why aren’t they beautiful enough in a way that does not beg to wring something from a dry (wet) something Call my name At night the states making life, not explaining anything but all the popular songs say call my name oh call my name, and if I call it out myself to you, call mine out instead as our poets do will you still walk on by? I have loved you for so long. You died and on the wind they sang your name to me but you said nothing. Yet you said once before and there it is, there, but it is so still. Oh being alone I call out my name and once you did and do still in a way you do call out your name to these states whose way is to walk on by that’s why I write too much At night the states whoever you love that’s who you love the difference between chaos and star I believe and in that difference they believed in some funny way but that wasn’t what I I believed that out of this fatigue would be born a light, what is fatigue there is a man whose face changes continually but I will never, something I will never with regard to it or never regard I will regard yours tomorrow I will wear purple will I and call my name At night the states you who are alive, you who are dead when I love you alone all night and that is what I do until I could never write from your being enough I don’t want that trick of making it be coaxed from the words not tonight I want it coaxed from myself but being not that. But I’d feel more comfortable about it being words if it were if that’s what it were for these are the States where what words are true are words Not myself. Montana, Illinois. Escondido.