Poem | Sophia Naz

The United States of Amnesia

Artwork : Matthew Bialer

Welcome to the United States of Amnesia
Where the average attention span is
an albatross around the neck of history
drowning in largesse of half-caf mocha frappucino

At every other corner, nine tenths
of teeth submerge in this melting pot, super bowl
of guillotined Halloween, cropped and photoshopped
to the death and the bell trolls a Clockwork Orange
clones & minions man the phones
ringing off the hook like
an armless pirate with his peddling
finger on the twitter
out to abduct you
only, lonely immigrant child, America
this illegal erection election year
unlike any other in living
erasure

Welcome to the Dystopian States
 of Amnesia,  to the gloom of the homeless underpasses
to the panhandling flutes drowned out
in the tropics of the nocturnal subterranean

Washed up on your shores like a bottle with a pent up ocean in my bladder
memory is the only currency I hold
the infected blankets up to the light,  I know
the smell of genocide. I have watched
women shamed as witches, watched them fall
like dominos on a Salem noon. I have met Sally Hemings and the strange
fruit of your history, America. I have fallen in your uncivil war
of a thousand and one episodes. This beast you thought you tamed? He prowls
the profiled night wearing
a police uniform

Beneath your bipolar indifference
a glacial racial iced age is dying
unseen below decks
in red bullet points
in blue moans

While a white white sea
sails on