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To everyone who told me that if I don’t like this country
I should go back to where I came from
After twenty-five years I’m only beginning
to understand the connection
between the five o’clock news
and the laxative ads that punctuate it.
I have work to do
on my spelling, learning to write “z”
in acclimatization
so as to take two sharp turns
instead of gliding around the curves
in the letter “s”
that bends with each argument
rather than obeying straight lines.
Extra letters weigh me down
when I say mould or colour
but I can’t change the sound of my accent.
A new start never meant
I’d erase myself. No amount of practice
helps me reach the high notes
in the national anthem.
You’d like me to be Manchester, New Hampshire,
or Vienna, Virginia: nothing but the name
of where I came from. You’d like me more
if I never complained
about the American headache
in my European head,
if I’d staple my hand
to my heart and cross the frontier
to citizenship, but being foreign
I feel like the cilantro
in the immigration salad, bathing in oil
and vinegar, rubbing up
against olives and tomatoes,
tossed in a bowl so wide
I get lost in it.
So I speak a little out of tune
when you say I should appreciate
my freedom then rebuke me for saying what I think;
so I never go to sports events
because the pre-game flyover makes me nervous;
so I don’t join the chorus
when the words become predictable,
I’m still trying
to find my place. Oh, I consider
going back but I can’t stand cold weather
and besides, I came to love
thorny landscapes and the hermit thrush’s call
pulling me into a canyon.
More of me each year
disappears in the desert. The heat
doesn’t intimidate me. My shadow
is at half-mast for the animals
crowded out of their habitat. Help me
learn what your god is doing for them,
why the president prays
before declaring war, why the gap
between church and state
is thinner than the border. I’m listening
as I’ve listened for a quarter century,
while choosing from a hundred kinds of cereal,
while waiting for a bus
to ride across the city
with passengers too poor to buy a car.
I waited so many hours in the sun
my tan won’t wash away. You tell me
I ought to be happy
in the greatest country ever, or leave it
but where else can I live two lives at once;
where else is the taste of not belonging
quite so spicy on an alien tongue?
First Published in Return to Waking Life, from Main Street Rag
David Chorlton grew up in industrial Manchester, England,
before moving to Vienna in 1971 and staying there for seven years.
His travel around Europe during that time left him with a full bank of impressions
that continue to surface in his work. The Southwest provided the eye-opening experience
of stunning scenery and an awareness of nature that he was not prepared for. His short
collection of poems, Common Sightings, with a desert theme, won a Palanquin Press award in 2001,
and a new book, A Normal Day Amazes Us appeared in 2003 from Kings Estate Press.
Email: David Chorlton
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