American Guzzling Cento

In her bomb hair: Shells full of thunder; in her mouth: the fingers of some calamity.
the footsteps of  your ghosts are white stones weighting my center, America

I am asleep in America too, And I don’t know how to wake myself,
And what now of dreaming? (All dreaming is now retroactive.) America,

Whose walls are made of RadioShacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
Madison Avenue, handsome, in-the-know, and superstitious. America:

O, this political air so heavy with the bells
This is my plangent note to the ambassadors of love. America’s,

blood-veined rivers, painted pipestone quarries, circled canyons
Sing you home into yourself and back to reason, America.

Let the water come
I make you a box of darkness with a bird in its heart, my America.

Sources: Terence Hayes, Aria Aber, Tony Hoagland, Deborah Landeau, Tony Hoagland, Gregory Corso, Gregory Corso, Deborah Landeau, Allison Adell Hedge Coke, Allison Adell Hedge Coke, Saadi Youseff, Terence Hayes

The author’s additions are in italics.

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Marceline White is a Baltimore-based writer and activist whose writing has appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, trampset, yolk, Prime Number, The Orchard Review, The Indianapolis Review, Atticus Review, and others. She has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. When not writing, Marceline can be found serving her two cats and telling her son to text her when he arrives at the EDM show. See marcelinewhitewrites.com.