This Should Be My America Poem by Robert Rorabeck

As I was eating a bowl of rice,
What she was doing was kissing
Another man,
Eyes the sensing pistons, lips the
Sport of birds of prey:
Angels resided in her bone structure,
I saw them first nest there in high school,
As she made her rounds with
Strange little debutants, likely dykes:
I loved her even then
When she pinned me near the lockers
And made me swap spit without
Pulling out our retainers:
How they drift now, the body taking
All of its figs down river
To listen to the fireside tales of the negros,
The cotton like lightless stars swaying
In the field,
Mark Twain calling down river,
His brother dead and he feeling guilty;
But this should be my America,
To see her last in a wayward eclipse,
Her body settling upon the newer acquaintances
Of love and business,
And finally marriage,
Her lips the sommeliers which swill
And then spit, her eyes the causeways
From which her judgment blooms;
All the waysides go by forgotten,
And the boys in their jogging shorts,
The smell of freshly cut grass and the grumbling
Automobiles, thus in evening her beauty
Lights the streets of nostalgia,
Swaying like the fingertips of waves the
Moonlight covers,
And thus she goes, promising with the tide,
To afflict the hungry senses of this last of the
Modern generations,
Now captivating the chastity through
Swinging doors,
Greeting patrons come in from
The flurrying snows,
For awhile a causeway, a muse curled
Up and busy with Easter decorations;
Already forgotten, cozily inebriated:
The subject of the colonial poet,
Bartering of rumors, canvas that allures,
This should be my America.