We:



(dreamscape of childhood 1970s)



Families, latter-day Joads who with their possessions packed into U-Haul trailers and children piled into the back-ends of station wagons; who with their hopes pinned to the dashboard and their memories in the rear-view mirror ply the freeways and dream of America. Who sailing on a sea of asphalt like ships, blown off course in a storm stand lookout through the windows for signs of land - who past islands of roadside rest stops, motel atolls and truckstop archipelagos keep watch against the bare horizon for friendly shores - certain that around the next bend in the road the New World awaits, that at the next exit off the freeway America awaits;

Who whisper promises angelic under motel midnight, to ourselves and to one another sweet promises everlasting;

Who dust of the imagination across deserts and endless freeways talk of hometowns that never were and never will be;

Who like our ancestors at Ellis Island sit now in bus stations, bus stations, bus stations - like they who sat huddled in their European misery at Ellis Island, waiting to enter the Promised Land sit now with bags piled around us, waiting for passage onward;

Who breathe dust and exhaust in Santa Rosa, New Mexico diesel fumes in Winslow, Arizona and nuclear testsite fallout in Tonopah, Nevada in coffeeshops at gas stations and on the parking lots of myriad roadside bars;

Who heartbreak and bonechill of a Saturday night taste the sting of regret from the shotglass of reckoning; walk through endless, solitary railyard night, at last only to find that the shotglass has yet been filled again and is still there, waiting on the bar;

Who sleep in Bakersfield Kingman Amarillo and Oklahoma City then awaken in Little Rock, to the Good-Morning kiss of Mother Freeway for the drive on to Memphis;

Who in sleepy, endless motel wilderness morning light awaken in Little Rock, from dreams of falling out of airplane windows to the Good-Morning kiss of Mother Freeway;

Who awaken in Tucson;

Who awaken in Albuquerque;

Who awaken in Barstow;

Who awaken in Reno Texarkana Shreveport and Phoenix, to the Good-Morning kiss of Mother Freeway for the drive on to Somewhere Anywhere Everywhere and Nowhere;

Who as fathers with fire in their eyes roll silent across empty spaces of night, sleepless and counting mileposts;

Who as mothers in abandoned moments on truckstop parking lots dream of warmth and permanence in a world unlit by neon;

Who as children on trailer park dirtpile Saturday afternoons play House; with matchbox cars and Lincoln Logs play Dick & Jane at Home, play See Spot Run, play See Mommy Make Breakfast, play See Daddy go to Work with his Briefcase Suit and Tie; who have never been to Disneyland but talk of someday going there; who in rented kitchenette rooms feed on food stamp hotdogs macaroni & cheese grape kool-aid and corn chips feed on daydreams feed on promises;

And who with childhood shattered on the rocks of oblivion become the ghosts of children; become torn and tattered child-ghosts, ashen with the faces of New Orleans cemetery angels; with headless Barbie dolls and armless, legless G.I.-Joes who issue forth from the trailer parks and the motels to haunt our countrymen in their living rooms across dreamland America - our countrymen, who in their Slaptown subdivisions sit watching the world on TV; sit thanking God for our Nation because just think of all those poor starving kids in Africa; sit thanking God for our Freedom for our sweet, sweet Liberty but fearing that the Russians and the Chinese and the Cubans and the North Vietnamese are plotting to destroy our way of life-



We: who time now in ashes gather today in the cold January stillness of cemeteries, to stand before the graves of our fathers and listen to the wind; who in old postcards of Texas and Oklahoma, in pieces of places in the past hovering over which like disembodied souls seek solace in the warm glimmer of recognition and who in backward glances out of teardrop eyelid corners find (hope?) that objects in the rear-view mirror may indeed be closer than they appear;

Who under Springsteen sunsets along the highways of Forever dream of crossing the bridge, el puente at last and coming home;

Who dream of crossing the bridge and coming home;

Who dream of coming home-

To America.



Previously published in Paris/Atlantic, Vol. XXII, No. 1, Spring 2000 (American University of Paris: Elise J. Manley et al, Editors)


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