american love poem

tonight, america dreams of rivers. far rivers, rivers singing us to sleep.we dream of men crossing miles away. we cannot see their faces, thoughtheir bodies bob against our bodies. tonight, my mother dances with america.

i have left her in a stranger's care. she begs him to kill a snake. he cradles itlike a lover and i am five hundred miles away

in selfish exile. i am looking for refuge, for rivers. i was told this placewas named for them. heard people bathed away their sins in rivers. insteadi drive five hundred miles from dixie to live in the land where it was born.twice the river calls me nigger, twice tells me to go home. home and i

are trying to dance. we hold each other like nervous children. tonight,i am five thousand miles away in jordan's river. the taxi drivers ask mewhere are you from? and laugh. i fall asleep to the muezzin's song. between

home and i, five thousand miles of hate for what she made me. five thousandmiles of loving her out loud. between home and i, a thousand lands, a thousandrivers of their own. america, my unrequited home, where must i go

for you to love me? where can i write of peaches and not wincelike their pickers' hands? america, there is love and there is loving, and youhave made me fear them both. i was born in dixieland. my lineage all liars.fictional choctaw bloodlines, half made up anthems, all love songs to me.

america, i have loved so many false things. america, if that's a sin, thendrown me for it. i'll find rest deep in your riverbed.