Today's poem is by Enzo Silon Surin

Elegy for the American Dream
       

When it reads "this could be you"
it doesn't mean you. You are not
the they or them of advertisements.

You are "the dead, arrayed in time"
of Pablo Neruda's The Chosen Ones
—the butt of jokes and machetes—

you are not a feature in these stories.
You are the withheld sneeze, you
are the closed-mouthed cough, &

a cupped yawn, you are hearsay—
the practical omission of first editions
and reports—not even byline in this

scene of bread and wine, an nsec—
not the target of ads that say "if you lived
here, you'd be home now." You are

a dog's yelp in the back of a truck, soon
to be fairytaled as the Hosanna of hyena
ghosts. You are, at best, a funereal hymn,

which means your body is a gravesite and
the city in which you orbit is a mass grave,
to which not everyone in this ad is invited.

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Copyright © 2024 Enzo Silon Surin All rights reserved
from American Scapegoat
Black Lawrence Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission