Today's poem is by Christopher Blackman

It's Morning Again in America
       

There is a lot of ruin in a nation and I am
the founding father of this one in particular,
pressing flesh for contributions at a donor breakfast.
Re-elect me, friends, and I will enact, on day one,
mandatory leave of soul from the body—
paid time off from the self guaranteed to all people.
And no longer will aircraft carriers lope beyond our straits with menace,
for we will be at peace, at last, I say. But the crowd
recedes from imagination, and I am hungry, thirsty, tired—

suddenly aware of a pain in my shoulder that makes me wince
when I remember it. Girls are bobbing like sparrows
in the plaza by the American Girl store,
cradling maroon bags, bracing themselves to welcome affection
into their hearts, and I ask a friend if he's ever felt joy like that.

Yes, he says, once, in Tempe, Arizona, in the '80s:
lying in the pool with a drink all morning, then tennis
then golf, then driving to the mountains and skiing all night
under lights. My friend and his roommate had the same racquet,
the same swing. It was like playing my reflection he says. I can picture
it as he describes the muddled orange of the drink,
the gliding down San Francisco Mountain as an expanse of darkness

encircled it. Elsewhere, people were at rest beyond the beacon,
unconscious in their homes and therefore excluded
from description, a fate that once seemed worse than death.
The next day, my friend and his shadow piled
into their '65 Plymouth and returned to the valley, downhill
the whole way, no reason to even touch the gas.
All this wasn't only meant to impress you,
but the idea was always on my mind.

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Copyright © 2024 Christopher Blackman All rights reserved
from Three-Day Weekend
Gunpowder Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission