The Middle of the Midwest
A Poem for these Times
I grew up in the middle of the Midwest
Where football is perfection
And working on cars is what men did,
Where we read books about people on the coasts
And in other lands who lived their dreams
And became their dreams and created dreams
For others.
I live in the middle of the Midwest
Where we look down on people who live on the coasts
And in urban areas, where people who trill their r’s are exotic
And people with dark skin know their place
And God meant marriage for a man and a woman
And we buy guns to protect our guns
From socialism.
I drank from the wells in the middle of the Midwest
Where air shows fly overheard, their booming thunder
Strikes awe in children and terror in our enemies,
Where men go off to war and watch football on big-screen TVs
And drink Bud or Coors, where we don’t wear masks
So we can feed our babies, where global warming is a hoax
And Dr. Fauci has a funny name.
I breathe the air in the middle of the Midwest
Where states are red and jobs are scarce
And for that we blame the Democrats,
Where we teach our children to respect the flag and kneel
And how to shoot a deer at fifty paces,
Where BLM is a terrorist organization
And “liberal church” is an oxymoron,
Where there is such a thing as too much education
And where poetry rhymes.
I woke up today in the middle of the Midwest
Where jobs are even more scarce and we re-elect
A governor who knows that Covid is as only as bad as the flu,
Where our president refuses to admit defeat,
Where flags in our yard tell everyone who we are,
And where we tell people on the coasts to fuck off,
To take their ideas somewhere else because
“God Bless the USA” means God Bless Us
Just as we are.
