Ella Goodman

 

America I am sinking summerteeth 

 into April’s marrow 

 

I remember  

when snow started in November  

 

when the lake froze so thick & clear  

you could count stripes on yellow perch  

 

America I remember Saturday mornings  

before The Simpsons—the ax, the woodstove, 

 

its wide cast-iron jaw cold & waiting 

America don’t think that I’d forget  

 

how its warmth was only  

everything when we got to freeze for it 

 

America we say atmospheric smog 

and you say it’s Monet’s Sunrise  

 

like it’s the portrait you commissioned– 

the one where the whole ship is going down 

 

and we have to keep on dancing 

 

America, what’s more American than that? 

 

America why are your schools still sieved with 

bullet holes? 

 

America when will you retrieve your democracy 

from those 50 million twitter bots? 

 

sorry, I meant X 

sorry, I meant go fuck yourself with your cybertrucks  

 

America innocence is a metonym for  

unacknowledgeable guilt  

 

America unacknowledgeable guilt is a metonym for  

freedom 

 

 

America I’ve been listening  

and when you talk  

 

in your sleep it sounds like  

a thousand nuclear shafts 

 

shuddering in the dark 

to the same rhythm that I shudder when 

 

someone asks me why I hate you 

I shudder and say I don’t! I don’t hate you!  

 

I don’t hate you, I don’t