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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