My country is broken, is estranged, is trying, we write,
as though there is such a material as a country, as
though the landlord doesn’t charge rent for life lived
outside the house. When it comes to survival there is no right
way but there’s no wrong way either. The country is
a construction, with each writing becomes more made.
I am making it now, here, to you—to say my country
provides an illusion of synthesis, as my landlord supplies
a fantasy of individuality. When I picture a country,
the ground is newly stormed—the snow a kind of revision
in its refusal of fission. But when I imagine the suburbs,
it is always sunny, with caution tape around oak trees,
landline lights blinking, and pictures of parents laid
as bookmarks. My name is the city and the city’s in my name:
I floss in the dark and write on icicles. The only borders
are my body’s, my counted and settled and made state.
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