Poetry | Gregory Fraser

Dear Lord, what can I make of my country? 

Only what it has made of me: a believer in nonsense 

as the sixth sense; a squirrel with blue forepaws; 

one of the hungry mouths of dusk. 

Dear Lord, lend me a hand. I need to stop 

the ministers from mumbling 

about suffering and salvation, suffering 

as salvation. I need to return to the day before 

I yawned, and courage leaped out of my mouth. 

My country, bent on destroying my country, 

why do we buy vodka by the case? 

Because it tastes like embalming fluid? 

My country, bent on restoring my country, 

shall I give you the shirt off my back, 

and the skin, and the yellow fat? 

My country is waging war against my country, 

and winning handily, and getting trounced. 

In honor of my country beating and my country beaten, 

in honor of the murdered halls and murdered paper

and blasted apples, I propose the truce of the wren 

and its reflection—the ignorant, innocent wren—

perched on the birdbath. I propose the sacred union 

of assonance, metaphor, the compound noun, 

of the boxer and border collie bound inside

the family mutt. I propose all-out surrender: 

to the silent mutations of clouds like changing minds. 

To the bloodless little death that is a glance in the mirror. 

To the lobbed projectiles of slow-pitch softball 

in June. I wave the white flag of this page.