To America,
to a beatless heart
machine, an iron lung,
and the privilege to stay living.
To one– gash too
puss, and peaceful.
A podium; is this thing still on?
America is a hearth
of cotton and twine
and it’s summer migrants’
fallen feathers
snapped beaks and
declawed ghetto poets.
Its speech is stolen
from sounds of snakes,
a soft SS, of gags
and jeers of a ballroom.
But my America listens
to love. Mirrors
zoochosis: itself.
It is a bondage,
my America.
To your body and voice
your weaponry,
your snare trap medication
and your home.
Feel the cheek of today,
my America,
bite it and bleed
and taste how bitter, my America.
The cusp of bloom, my America,
is poor harbor bay: an explosion of red
but you have been the light of god, a white
ship, only crawling in the great blue.
If I kiss you,
my America,
will I know you slipped
a “F*gg*t”
between my teeth,
or will I save it till tomorrow,
wish it down the fountain drain?
You just can’t give up
this sanctuary– this America.
Because my mother tells me
I am safe.
In photographs and in the palms
of her hands.
And I do not think of
death. To America.
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