Part of our series of pieces inspired by the Democratic Party’s 2024 platform.
“We have a long way to go to realize the full promise of America, but we are committed as a party to continuing the work to build a nation where all people are not only created equal, but treated equally throughout their lives.”
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I am longleaf pine, soybean
and cotton fields. I am not American.
I am crawfish, corn on the cob spread
out on yesterday’s news, but I am not
American. I am bicycles at night, whooping
around a cul de sac, helmetless
and high on being nine. I am scraped knees
and tetanus shots, smoking a Marlboro
my best friend, whose face
I’ve forgotten, stole from her mother.
But I am not American. I am Walmart
and Dollar Stores, a card-carrying
Costco, I am three-story malls
with Macys on one end and Sears holding
down the other. I am every food court
from Baton Rouge to Boston, corn
dogs, chili dogs, chili cheese fries. I am 8-Dollar
Motels, which always cost more
than eight dollars, Holiday Inns, and, at Christmas,
a Marriott. I am in the back seat
of a car, no seatbelt, moving from Denver
to Montgomery, my father somewhere
in Vietnam, my mother tossing out
Kleenex along the highway
like confetti. I am not American.
I am San Francisco, Valdosta, Manhattan
and even a little Atlanta, but never
American. I am Southern, for a while
West Coast, and now East, I am half-
naked with a boy from Birmingham
on a Fort Lauderdale Beach and half-naked
with another boy from Tallahassee
on the same beach the next night.
I am not American. I am
Jefferson Davis High, though never taught
who he was, football games, flood-lit,
a marching band, pretending to play
the clarinet. I am Walt Disney World
and Planned Parenthood, both in the same month.
I am crying in the shower. I am being saved
in a Baptist church. I am taking
three ecstasy every night for three weeks, my face
pressed to a windshield, I am eating
a ham and cheese sandwich, held together
with last month’s mayonnaise, I don’t remember
how I made it home.
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Sarah Wetzel is the author of three poetry collections, most recently The Davids Inside David, from Terrapin Books. Sarah is publisher and editor at Saturnalia Books, and when not shuttling between her two geographic loves—Rome, Italy and New York City—she is a PhD candidate in comparative literature in the CUNY Graduate Center. She is trying to spend less time on planes.
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Peter J. Dellolio is working on a critical study of Alfred Hitchcock, Hitchcock’s Cinematic World, excerpts of which have appeared in The Midwest Quarterly, Literature/Film Quarterly, Kinema, Flickhead, and North Dakota Quarterly. He lives in Brooklyn.
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