Photo courtesy of Jules Weitz.
America
This afternoon I am well, thank you.
Walking down Main Street in Danville, KY.
The heavy wind so sensuous.
Last night I fell-
ated four different men back in
Philadelphia season lush and slippery
with time and leaves.
Keep your eyes to yourself, yid.
As a kid, I pledged only to engage
in onanism on special holidays.
Luckily, America.
Sin has consequences, repent,
a laughing jackalope,
Las Vegas,
where all is rendered garish and tolerable
under the heaving slick of capital.
I wear my KN95 outdoors,
just to be the wind.
Fuck an aerosol.
I win 288 bones playing
Texas hold ‘em, I trick ‘em by
disguising myself as a hapless fairy
jewboy, oy vey, I say,
and wink,
what is again this thing,
a straight?
All night, I dream repentant bisexual dreams,
avenues strewn with redolent gladiolas.
In Nashville I walk through flooded streets.
The men wear ferrets, women drink beers
through purple straws.
The night is drenched in siren beats.
I wanna weep, but donna weep,
I am ready to go home,
but where?
In the elevator I look
from the mirrored doors
as the teens
keep saying to each other
you’re crazy
you guys are crazy
you’re so crazy
and this is how America was saved.
Moriel Rothman-Zecher is the author of the novels Before All the World, which was named an NPR Best Book of 2022, and Sadness Is a White Bird, which was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Moriel’s work has been published in The American Poetry Review, Barrelhouse, Colorado Review, The Common, Jewish Currents, Lit Hub, Nashville Review, The New York Times, Poetry Daily, The Paris Review’s Daily, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere. Moriel is the recipient of the National Book Foundation’s ‘5 Under 35’ honor, two MacDowell Fellowships. Moriel teaches creative writing at Swarthmore College, as a Visiting Assistant Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing, and is also a member of the faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars’ MFA Program. Moriel’s first book of poems, I Still Won’t Have Known, from which this poem is drawn, was recently acquired by and is forthcoming from BOA Editions.
