Can’t lick the witch wind that carries rumors over shining aurora-lit prairies:
horror of what comes to light at the dawn of the mind. Will you permit me to rise
from my sinkhole, to draw in the dirt the garnet ring my grandmother sold for gas
just to survive? Arrive anonymous, starved on hardtack and shame,
in this place where she was erased? How will you animate this forgotten history?
Pepper the disarray with white-hooded prairie schooners filled with calico-clothed
divas gathering their brood alongside militant fathers donning wide-brimmed hats?
It’s natural to want to lie when you look in the mirror, see you are naked
down to the crimes. Let me tell you, honey, truth is the harmony your song has been
missing. Set down a soapbox and let me step up and sing out about the naked
and the dead. The ghosts we’ve not yet seen clothe the woods of your stories. Let your candy
apple cowboys die in their own desert until my grandmother’s name is spoken
like the emergency it has become.
From The Atlantic via this RSS feed