Читать книгу Pruning Burning Bushes - Sarah M. Wells - Страница 10

Climbing the American Metal Playground Slide

I am the groove in the “R” at the center

rolling forward, narrative ornate

because I have repainted my primer

of private history emerald green,

replacing the rust-red grit I inherited. . .

though it might only be rouge,

a ruse of erudition over ignorance,

making rubies from the affairs

of faith and farms. I trace the space

between the dirt and my fingertips anyway,

as if to lift the elements of my ribs

from their fissures, a superficial rinse,

surface shimmer. The root of my fruit

is still bruised at the base of the tree.

This rhetoric of theology follows me, I am

swallowed in iambs of nursery rhymes

and grace, grandmother of forgiveness

who handed me the caramel-coated apple

and said eat all the way to the seed.

The remaining core is this verse I climb,

every rung branching back

to our revolutionaries. This earth

is ours, its harvest, its rot. This ladder

has our dirt tucked between the crevices

of every letter. I reach and reach,

polish whatever skin I can and trip

over the broken treads, all repeat

American, American, American,

until I reach the peak and slide, hot metal burning.