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.
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
About 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, N.Y.
The Academy of American Poets is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, whose aim is to make poetry available to a wider audience. Email The Academy at poem-a-day@poets.org.
(c) 2016 Michael Dumanis. Originally published by the Academy of American Poets, www.poets.org. Distributed by King Features Syndicate.
