WHAT AMERICA
What shined America
did my great-grandmother sail
toward—immense fluting country of
language her teeth never
learned to shape? Lantern. Gun.
Salt. White geese downed. Thick
necks she twisted
to survive: meat for another
week, webbed feet’s delicacy
on her immigrant
tongue. Singed.Country where
she tiered up black
braids & wore long skirts
into the ’60s. Famine
arrives in different bodies. Where
she wanted her coffin
tapped three times
against her brownstone’s door
to cross her to afterlife.
What moon-eyed Lady Liberty
did her son chase a world
war for, burning camps
of ash & lamentation, giving
his watch & shoes to skeleton
children in her name—
she forsook Mass after a nun
forced that son
to hit his sister with a ruler,
she buried two other
small sons in her well
of dreams. Of stones. What
America wakes
me, where everyone is pollen
in someone else’s cross
hairs, where homegrown
strawberries & tomatoes
bleed someone’s blood,
yet we still eat.
What American dirt
passages my great-
grandmother’s sorrows
& spine—Mother of Dolors,
you also buried your son,
our keening ground,
my son & daughter hate
knowing children
like them were sold
away from their mothers’
haunted aprons,
where they touch my darker
skin: Mama, we’re all family here.
A 2017 NJ Council on the Arts poetry fellow, Nicole Rollender is the author of the poetry collection, Louder Than Everything You Love (Five Oaks Press), and four poetry chapbooks. She has won poetry prizes from Gigantic Sequins, CALYX Journal, Princemere Journal and Ruminate Magazine. Her work appears in Alaska Quarterly Review, Best New Poets, The Journal, and West Branch, among others. She’s managing editor of THRUSH Poetry Journal and holds an MFA from the Pennsylvania State University. Visit her online: www.nicolerollender.com.