Читать книгу Slant Six - Erin Belieu - Страница 10

SOMEONE ASKS, WHAT MAKES THIS POEM AMERICAN?

And I answer by driving around, which seems

to me the most American of activities, up there

with waving the incendiary dandelion of sparklers

or eating potato salad with green specks of relish,

the German kind, salad of immigrants, of all

the strange, pickled things we carry

over from other places, like we did on Easter

mornings in Nebraska, stuffing our Sunday

shoes full of straw so that either Jesus

or the Easter Bunny could leave us small,

bullet-shaped candies in honor of what, I was

never quite sure. Where do such customs

come from? Everywhere!

Americanness is everywhere,

wedged into everything, is best when driving

around a frowsy Gulf Coast city with its terrific

mini-marts like Bill’s, the very best of all marts!

UN of toasted boat rats and boys from the projects

revving their hoopties; of biscuit-shaped ladies who

penny their scratch cards and hold up the line;

where Panama (from Panama) commands

the counter, and Mr. Bud, the camel-faced man,

offers every kid a sweetie, producing a jar

of petrified lollies from a shelf also

displaying an array of swirly glassed pipes

and Arthurian bongs, where Raul the Enforcer

idles at the back, packing since the incident

in the parking lot last summer.

Of course, people

here have their discontents: the artists save

what tips they don’t snort and always mean

to leave for New York or Seattle, though I tell

them both drizzle like November half the time.

So I say, No! That’s un-American. We need

our artists everywhere, not scrunched up

in one or two rarefied spots,

which makes their parties anxious. And Miłosz

says artists come from everywhere, from everyplace,

the capital and the provinces, to keep

the body healthy or else end up like 17th-

century Hapsburgs or German shepherds

listing with hip dysplasia. So I’m circling

the swampy taint of this Southern city, choosing

art, choosing to be American, actively pursuing

that fabled happiness when the alternatives

present themselves, which is my obligation,

both legislator and witness to Bill’s

Mini-Mart and Mike’s Chinese Grocery,

and the hungry citizens queuing up

in front of Jenny’s Lunchbox, waiting

on line for a pile of cheese grits to start

this day, placing them firmly for the moment

in the happiness column. Because what’s more

American than a full stomach on a sunny morning?

What more than this fat-assed acceleration,

driving with the windows cranked down?