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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
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AMERICA
Anna Cates
David Lee Roth once said
drinking a cup of toe nail clippings
you think is cold Coke is distasteful.
So too is finding a DoMe
in a woman you supposed a generative feminist.
But the DoYou’s pick-up line is different:
“You’re religious right.”
She tells you that she’s ugly.
She points her finger to her chest.
She drives you across town.
She drives herself.
Be careful how you tell her no.
She left the bedroom door wide open.
She sighed to her son in bed,
“Oh, you’re so much better-looking than your father,”
to spite his incest with their daughter.
She thought she’d get him back
in America—
home of the broken pillar
home of the broken dick
land of tobacco and corn.
Spring, 2006,
in the year of our Lord
Jesus Christ, King of kings
a Florida woman is arrested.
Her crime? She laid a stillborn child.
Sirens howl. Police cars
arrive in a Vegas of lights.
Somebody watches from the window
in America—
land of the Quaker in makeup—
In America
home of the broken dream
of the miscarried embryo’s $10,000 funeral.
In America
grotesque caricatures huddle
under steeples like dunce caps
and burble prayers like frogs.
In America
under the dunce cap
they boast they bred like dogs—
two nothing-but-worms intertwining.
Shine the spotlight.
In America
under the dunce cap
the rotted corpus remains within—
In America
where an Adam—
all mud and ribs—
had his dick broken by an angry wife.
In America
under God
sometimes a dick gets busted.
In America
an old Quakeress warned,
“If you open your mouth too wide
you’ll never shut it again.”
Shine the dental light—
In America
where the victimarchist batters her broken arm
where Walt Whitman sprawled out—naked—
upon the grass
where Jews await the Christ
and scientists the next mutation
where George Washington Carver ground nuts
where lightning struck and shattered a dead tree.
In America
the Holy Roller says F.R.O.G.
stands for “fully reliant on God.”
His Harley’s bumper sticker bears a cross.
His leather jacket’s button reads,
“Jehovah Jirah, My Provider”
in America
home of seven fattened cows—
hens with tongues—
In America
where the Church landed to escape the Church
where the Church persecuted the Church
where Puritan expelled Quaker
where freedom equals diversity
and diversity equals freedom—
In America
where gay couples begged the Quakers to marry them
and the Quakers replied, “Marriage is between
one man and one women,” as if to say
“No bigamy, please,”
in America
where African equals peanut butter
and Indian equals corn.
In America
a fetus is left
in the toilet at the high school prom
and the Preacher says that’s
the worst evil in America
and demonic minions blush
in America
home of the broken dick of a father
who doesn’t look as good as his son.
In America
the Baptist Minister’s wife
says she’s lost one.
Call the police!
In America
a Quaker wears his collar
loosely like a noose—
In America
home of the Wolarys and the Paynes—
In America
that formed the anti-unification confederacy
for diversity in a fractured society
where a spiked heel sunk into mud
and a Bibled Fonz burnt rubber
where an angry mob charred bras
and the enemy became
monkey, pig, worm—
the ugly mouth has spoken.
In America
home of the broken dream of bathroom patrol
the intolerable weak womb
the empty cowboy hat
the Baptist Minister’s wife
changes her story to “a large bowel movement.”
In America
she leaves the bathroom door wide open.
In America
somebody says “Amen.”
Raise the torch light!
In America
she’ll never be religious right again.
Their mouths remain wide open—
aghast!
In America
land of tobacco and corn
In America
home of Quakers
gargoyles,
frogs.
