Elegy for Michigan

as much as i would love to believe

that you can conjure up dreams beyond

those of leaving your lands, i have seen

or dreamt none myself.

* * * * *

i heard of times when people like my grandfather

saw you as Moses—leading him from the fields

where his fingers were pricked up stems

as Hebrews were whipped and bound—

my grandfather was bound by roots as fetters

but you gave him a Drinking Gourd

shining through the dusty darkness

with steal and welding sparks;

but, like Moses wandering through the barren trials,

you died right before he reached the Land

of Milk and Honey—to him, a paycheck

and a gazing upon his skin with blind eyes.

* * * * *

i see your babes whirring down the highway

over broken beer bottles, paying no regard

to the grasses your exhaust blows upon

those once-firm stems.

* * * * *

winter is a span from the falling of teeth,

worn out from chattering—

thighs are sore from attempts

to remind us all that not all is barren.

i pity you but i pity the children

born into your frigidness, who see nothing

but blinding flakes and reflections of sunlight

which leave them squinting, unable to open their eyes—

they enter not seeing the darkness,

thy grey slipped into the sky from smoke stacks;

their first breaths are clogged by soot

and they will never know the meaning of a breeze.

it breaks my heart, really:

they emerge in a burst of aliveness, writhing pulls

only to find no light, no sun, no breath—

only gusts that tear our flying flags in two.

* * * * *

i pray for every deer i see in the road:

i hope they are alone, we'll end their suffering

but their ends, i hope, will not bring morbid misery to more

by our engines or our fingers on a trigger.

* * * * *

my uncle stayed with us one Thanksgiving

as his wife threw his belongings out on their lawn—

he was out of work and i was out of room,

exiled to the sofa for weeks.

he left before i was awake, i never saw him

though i heard he slept downstairs, in my room,

in my bed—this shameful things lay where i

found my own shame with my hands nights before.

when he left i found my room distraught:

the smell of tobacco and a flannel hunting jacket

left on the floor

next to a discarded shotgun shell—

i could not touch it, i could not let my fingers

make it blow; i could not feel the metal in my hands

nor could i see the spot on the floor where it lay

until my father came to pick it up for me.