Commentary on the War on Iraq:
A Portrait of Young America, 2003

Your nightmares
are the skeletons of your parents'
white suburban conservative middle-class closet.
At night, you hide
twisting the blankets
from commies, faggots, tree-huggers, atheists,
those god-damned hippies

Arthritic, forty-year old Boogeymen
passed down from your
crew-cutted father
along with the keys to the mustang
You inherit a dusty shoebox
of enemies, wars, justifications
dried-up, brittle

Your culture hits me
(like the odor of a forty-year old corpse,
barely sealed in with one fresh coat of paint
scented with cK)
as you stumble into the world,
eyes squeezed shut, clinging
to your moth-eaten manifesto
Trying to be your father,
Always thought you'd be your father,
Trying to be-

But finally you scream in desperate block letters
That I am afraid to defend my freedom
My god-given right to fight
That I am the one who is afraid.



Celeste Côté January 2003

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