Mary E. Weems, Cleveland

Amistad

Myth

Erection

Republic

Indian Killing

Christian

Atheists

Narrow

Dirt

Rape

Erase

Antithesis

Murder

***

American Dream

I’ve never had one

word without African

empty as whole waiting for something.

***

The American Ream

***

American Musical

Gene Kelly Dances across letters

he is also ice

his feet fast

begin to melt

he is ankles hobbling

over AMERICAN

he is on his knees

his prayer is drips

on the sidewalk

the letters are lit like a Broadway sign

all light white

Gene Kelly is the light

turns

turns it out

melts.

***

Watching the letters drip like sweat on a slave’s, sharecropper’s, [ill]egal

immigrant’s back, I notice

how it disappears like opportunity in America.

***

Letters are clear

shaped like ones

on American money

ancestors appear

in space between

faces misshapen puzzles

mouths open

hands touching a letter

The three A’s become shadows

strangers landing no shore.

***

Ice impermanent as the middle class

as out of place as waste.

***