Nebraska by Michael Dumanis

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend February 23, 2016   Nebraska   Michael Dumanis

I could play the accordion so I was selected for the amateur propaganda team. It was very cold. I had to stop up the hole in my shoe. I used the lid of a tin can.   As far as I can tell, there's nothing trustworthy about my experience of reality. I stand on one leg. I stand on the other leg. I rotate my arms clockwise   and call this exercise. In the home movie I recognize my coat. Taking my turn with the mechanical bull at Uncle Ron’s Wild West Saloon I hold on for as long as a minute.   So little happens on a given day, which is why I play the accordion until I am riddled with someone’s applause, which is why I drive to Arthur County to see   the hay bale church and the world’s smallest courthouse. If I was a blue jay or some kind of robin I would fly figure-eights over the cottonwoods. Despite the wind, I would not curse the wind.   The future is a rumor like the past. The new anxiety supplants the old anxiety. The continent I stand my ground on drifts, which is why I have asked you to marry me.   I am solid gold, I say, and I am capable of loving you until the final asteroid hides Omaha under an ocean of ash, but you’re unavailable.   They were on their way to the ocean when they made their minds up to stay here. The grass was so tall they picked wildflowers without stepping down from their horses.   We are all so lucky. It is terrifying. It is a blue sky day for all the freezingness. I blink into the chasm of sunlight endlessly. I forget my life, but then I remember my life.            Copyright © 2016 Michael Dumanis. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   “I lived in Nebraska from 2005 to 2007. Often, when I told people where I lived, they’d mention having driven through the state on their way to one coast or the other, often without stopping, at times unhelpfully adding that ‘it took forever to get out of.’ It got me thinking about the people who chose to stay, who were perhaps first headed somewhere else, but decided to make this vast prairie their home.” —Michael Dumanis   Michael Dumanis is the author of My Soviet Union (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007). He teaches at Bennington College and lives in Brooklyn, New York.   Poetry by Dumanis   My Soviet Union (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007) "Mississippi: Origins" by Anna Journey "What I Mean When I Say Farmhouse" by Geffrey Davis "Theories of Time and Space" by Natasha Trethewey Poem-a-Day   Launched during National Poetry Month in 2006, Poem-a-Day features new and previously unpublished poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038