UNAMERICANA

2 poems, a thought, and a dream

Photo by Chelaxy Designs on Unsplash

The Informant

I am thinking about beauty. The more quiet my life becomes, the more I can shine.

This… is very unAmerican activity.

I am a secret agent — cannot reveal how level and still I seek to become.

If I fulfill my mission, I’ll have no place here.

Do you know your neighbors?

Hiding in a normal house

might be one of us.

Detaching, unmasking,

Ferrying intel to another realm.

An informant. Hidden among Amazon boxes, but actually, sending messages through the stars.

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I dreamt

I was in a nighttime Uber with no destination. The driver was silent and didn’t mind because he was getting paid more the longer we went.

I decided food was something to want.

“Sir, can you stop… at a restaurant?”

He pulled off the dark highway to a restaurant.

The people there were hurried, pushy, with broken American bodies. Families ate on giant beds. Dog poop was in the corner. I wasn’t hungry.

I looked up to see my parents cheering, waving to me, outside the restaurant window. Luke, I knew, was sitting shotgun, waiting in their car.

I remembered then that I had a full story, memorized, prepared for a show that night. They would take me to the show so I could perform.

I got outside into the cold and said:

“Thank God you’re here! It would have been $80 to Uber from here to the theater.”

But what I meant, and what was too tender to say, was thank you, for pulling me from the spiraling oblivion of nothingness and giving my life a shape and meaning.

But…

HA!

You can’t say that in real life!

Or even in a dream!

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February 16

I have now had two very smart people in my life — who do not write poetry— tell me that: in a poem every word must be perfect, considered, and just right.

Is it coincidence then that they do not write poetry?

Who would do a thing they were certain to fail, in their own

expert estimation?

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Inflamed

Poetry is contagious and changes, like a virus it keeps moving

shifting and makes you sick with words like snot

White blood cells flocking to a wound

A profusion of ideas spilling out to fight the intruding virus that is “circumstances,” “happenings.”

My nose is running with poetry

because I sat down, paused, and naively hoped for silence.

But every illness runs its course, so I’m keeping my pen moving

until the inflammation cools.

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