Americana: mostly fiction (don't take it personally)
Everyone I knew always said they were going to get out,
get away,
but so far I think I’m the only one who has.
They’re stuck in a shipping town at the tip of
Gitchi-gummi,
with dirty rags, dirty hands, and dirty faces-
everything scuffed up and rough around the edges.
There’s things there you can’t get anywhere else-I guess that’s why they
call it home-
like the mayor’s daughter,
who let me stick my hand up her skirt;
or like the girl who, at 17, tattooed my name with Sharpie and a safety pin
on the back of her hand.
Like the boy who died-I heard about it just last week-,
just took a shotgun and his pickup and made an end;
I knew his family.
Like the one who broke my heart,
crumbled it in one hand and tossed the pieces to the wind;
I remember when she slapped me and said
“You don’t know how many times I’ve lied,
do you?”
I told her: I’d had a clue
when I saw her kissing someone at sunset on the pier
and she told me she was with her grandmother.
Home has those places that you can’t look at without swallowing hard:
the place where I fingerfucked my second girlfriend for the first time,
and my first one much more than once;
the rocks that stick up through waves in the bay
and lurked sharp one summer for our bare skin;
the lights on the skyline, flashing from radio towers
and the tornado siren’s top.
Home sounds like gravel poured onto ice roads,
and smells of rotted rosepetal mulch spread between bushes at the edge of the road.
Home is faded flags-threadbare cotton covering slatted bedframes,
picnic tables with the wind under their skirts,
bowed bony shoulders sticky from drying sweat.
Home is those disgusting houses,
still covered in babyspit,
and semen,
blood from skinned knees and failed pregnancies,
home is wooden floors with food in the corners
and walls caving in as the ground rolls away beneath them.
Home is the things you can’t pack into the trunk of your car,
everything you leave behind to sour and rot.
get away,
but so far I think I’m the only one who has.
They’re stuck in a shipping town at the tip of
Gitchi-gummi,
with dirty rags, dirty hands, and dirty faces-
everything scuffed up and rough around the edges.
There’s things there you can’t get anywhere else-I guess that’s why they
call it home-
like the mayor’s daughter,
who let me stick my hand up her skirt;
or like the girl who, at 17, tattooed my name with Sharpie and a safety pin
on the back of her hand.
Like the boy who died-I heard about it just last week-,
just took a shotgun and his pickup and made an end;
I knew his family.
Like the one who broke my heart,
crumbled it in one hand and tossed the pieces to the wind;
I remember when she slapped me and said
“You don’t know how many times I’ve lied,
do you?”
I told her: I’d had a clue
when I saw her kissing someone at sunset on the pier
and she told me she was with her grandmother.
Home has those places that you can’t look at without swallowing hard:
the place where I fingerfucked my second girlfriend for the first time,
and my first one much more than once;
the rocks that stick up through waves in the bay
and lurked sharp one summer for our bare skin;
the lights on the skyline, flashing from radio towers
and the tornado siren’s top.
Home sounds like gravel poured onto ice roads,
and smells of rotted rosepetal mulch spread between bushes at the edge of the road.
Home is faded flags-threadbare cotton covering slatted bedframes,
picnic tables with the wind under their skirts,
bowed bony shoulders sticky from drying sweat.
Home is those disgusting houses,
still covered in babyspit,
and semen,
blood from skinned knees and failed pregnancies,
home is wooden floors with food in the corners
and walls caving in as the ground rolls away beneath them.
Home is the things you can’t pack into the trunk of your car,
everything you leave behind to sour and rot.