Today's poem is by Travis Mossotti

Wherefrom Comes This Country Goes
       

Comes our patron city of burnt-clay façades

        into the canonized American heart gone quaked

                and split and sown. Goes the flame-raked

        smokestack estate plan drawn out one thousand

generations until our lovechild escapes to a river

        surrounded by dust that swishes its flit and grain

                into the wind of grit and scour. Comes

        a yelpish bang ka-ching from faraway kingdoms

of registers rung to our wasteland landfills and roil.

        Goes the nerve-wracked birds to rally black batons.

                Comes the blotter stains whorling and vanishing

        into scrimmages where bone breaks get set

back into place with mortar and red brick. Goes

        the healing into the moon-whelped spring singing

                chrysalis, singing hoarfrost, singing gravestone.

I call forth a bustle of veiled debutantes

kerchiefing tears from church bells which loll

        in warped towers—I call and the fireclay comes.

                I call forth a gramophone sipping Stack-O-Lee

        on a wraparound porch, some backwater asylum,

and the needle scrapes like a canoe run ashore.

I call forth the flight feathers of crows and watch

                as they unstitch butternut from blackhaw,

        ash from sweetgum—I call and the brick kilns come.

I call forth the bellows and the fires stoked

        until they reach the sweet red color of hell,

                the fervor of flame snap and the seam peels away.

        I call forth the prefab floodplain churches

and the mob bosses teetering on the threshold

        of bootleg nirvana—I call and the warehouses come.

                I call and the whole goddamned country comes.

        I whistle and this city snaps its heels at attention.

I sing of this home I sing of thee and I sing America

        strung up by its ankles and slit from nape to nuts.

                I sing Mississippi and I sing of my palatial,

        my watery commerce, blessed with wide hips

and easy birth. I sing wherefrom comes this country.

        I sing and it goes back to the place where crowns

                are restored to derecho-snapped old-growth oaks.

        To where the Atlantic and Pacific lap their waves

against Ouachita mountain peaks and the sun

        fiddles a final arrow loose from his quiver,

                and the moon falls asleep atop her last

        barrel of wine wherein ferments the original

darkness. That we may drink from it and be

        healed, that we may drink from it and be broken.

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Copyright © 2024 Travis Mossotti All rights reserved
from Apocryphal Genesis
Saturnalia Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission