Patriotics

Yesterday a little girl got slapped to death by her daddy,
out of work, alcoholic, and estranged two towns down river.
America, it’s hard to get your attention politely.
America, the beautiful night is about to blow up

and the cop who brought the man down with a shot to the chops
is shaking hands, dribbling chaw across his sweaty shirt,
and pointing cars across the courthouse grass to park.
It’s the Big One one more time, July the 4th,

our country’s perfect holiday, so direct a metaphor for war,
we shoot off bombs, launch rockets from Drano cans,
spray the streets and neighbors’ yards with the machine-gun crack
of fireworks, with rebel yells and beer. In short, we celebrate.

It’s hard to believe. But so help the soul of Thomas Paine,
the entire county must be here—the acned faces of neglect,
the halter-tops and ties, the bellies, badges, beehives,
jacked-up cowboy boots, yes, the back-up singers of democracy

all gathered to brighten in unambiguous delight
when we attack the calm and pointless sky. With terrifying vigor
the whistle-stop across the river will lob its smaller arsenal
halfway back again. Some may be moved to tears.

We’ll clean up fast, drive home slow, and tomorrow
get back to work, those of us with jobs, convicting the others
in the back rooms of our courts and malls—yet what
will be left of that one poor child, veteran of no war

but her family’s own? The comfort of a welfare plot,
a stalk of wilting prayers? Our fathers’ dreams come true as nightmare.
So the first bomb blasts and echoes through the streets and shrubs:
red, white, and blue sparks shower down, a plague

of patriotic bugs. Our thousand eyeballs burn aglow like punks.
America, I’d swear I don’t believe in you, but here I am,
and here you are, and here we stand again, agape.

I happen to love this dark, ambivalent poem by midwestern poet David Baker.

To Ms. Entrekin, Executive Director U.S. Pony Club:

          In response to your seventh “Important Notice” postcard- as I mentioned three postcards ago, this is no longer Jake’s address, he lives in Brooklyn. And you can abandon your fantasy he’ll be calling to update his biographical information for the Pony Clubs Album, because- and I’ll be direct here, as your incessant badgering leaves me no choice- Jake has no interest in Pony Club. In fact, Jake recently told me that he fucking hates ponies and everything they stand for.

          I hope I don’t coming off sounding harsh or anything. And just so you know, personally, I have nothing against ponies, despite the fact that you’ve never invited me to join your little club.

                                                Sincerely,

                                                Jake’s Mom

          Yesterday, I cut off my hair.

          It was all pretty sudden. Somehow, I had turned a corner from feeling confident about having long hair to paranoiac frumpdom.

          And because I live in suburban Connecticut, and because I am too easily moved to action by the real or imagined opinions of others, I found myself sitting in a swivel chair at Lisa’s Gallery of Hair, next to the Stop and Shop in one of my hometown’s two dying strip malls, where a haircut will set you back $11.95. My stylist was Marie, a woman who looked like she stepped out of a Walker Evans Dust Bowl portrait with hands that reeked of cigarettes. I was blathering to her about how nervous I was about getting my hair cut, and should I do it, and what did she think? and how I had gone back and forth about it and blah blah blah and Marie just bunched my hair into her fist and lopped off eight inches. “There.” she said. “Now you don’t need to think about it anymore,” which I think was her way of getting me to shut up.

          I looked in the mirror, and saw myself no longer on the edge of anything but squarely in the middle: middle aged, mid-length hair, medium brown, not too curly, not too straight. “Okay,” Marie said. “Is that how you wanted it?

          “Yes,” I told her. God help me, it was just how I wanted it.

          I am waiting for the backlash of too much, too fast.

          Enough, already.

          I am waiting for the grass to grow and the dust to settle. I am waiting for Twitter to sink into silence and the 24/7 newsfeed’s hungry mouth to close.

          Which came first, our lust to know everything, all the time, or the technology that made the feeding frenzy possible?

          I am waiting for that deep breath.

          I am waiting for the backlash because trust me, it will come, and I, for one, am patient.

          Last night our town had its annual Fourth of July fireworks display. Sam and I didn’t go. Truth is, I’m not a fan of fireworks. The only way to make them even remotely interesting is to watch them while drunk. This also applies to parades not including the Rose Bowl palominos (they are the divine union of my top two girlhood fantasies: a super-long silky tail of hair and a horse). Majorettes are okay, too, because of the dramatic tension created by the possibility they might drop the baton and humiliate themselves.

          Anyway, last night I was thinking about fireworks and parades and it occurred to me that both are symbolic of military might (fireworks = bombs, parades = marching into battle). This started me wondering if being a pacifist has anything to do with my aversion to these activities. I finally decided that I was giving the subject too much weight, and myself too much credit. I’m pretty positive the reason I don’t like fireworks and parades has nothing to do with what they symbolize and everything to do with what they actually are: boring.

          Last week, Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina vanished. He was not, as his staff had been instructed to report, hiking the Appalachian Trail. Instead, he was in Argentina, exploring some South American peaks and valleys, belonging to his mistress.

          Sanford’s extramarital affair had been ongoing for nearly a year, and his mysterious disappearance last week has now raised questions about an official trip he took last summer to Argentina and Brazil, funded by South Carolina taxpayers. While maintaining the trip’s legitimacy despite an itinerary which included a two-day “bird hunt” in Argentina, evenings “on his own” and finally, my favorite, an entire day booked off from official duty to go on a “self-guided tour,” Sanford has now said he will reimburse the state, and released this statement: “I made a mistake while I was there in meeting with the woman who I was unfaithful to my wife with.” At the same time the press came out with a number of leaked personal e-mails, including this one from Sanford’s mistress: “Last Friday I would had stayed embrassing and kissing you forever.”

          One thing I can tell you is that these two share more than an illicit passion; they also have a mutual inability to express themselves in English.