Fantasia on American Themes
BY SHANE MCCRAE
I’ve been American since was before
They someone shipped my might have looked but looked
Only a little like me elbow or
An ankle or my elbow when it’s crooked
Each part an anchor drags me centuries
Back down sweet-smelling anchor sweet like shit
From cows I raised but sweet in too-far trees
The smell in the trees how miles away from it
Has to be miles I’ve run it has to be
The farm’s stink where ’tis said those flowers wilt
That bumblebees too gently tend whose freedom
Created me if God created me
That we my ancestors and I that we come
Begging like strangers to the house we built
Two Appearances After the Resurrection
BY SHANE MCCRAE
- Mistaken for the Gardener
Where are the children you would tell, the hidden ones
The hidden two of the three now pulling you, two pulling
You through the market, one behind you pushing, one
Pulling each arm. Though both of the two now pulling you
Are almost dragging you, backs to their destination
The hidden and the seen, both, giggling, you only
See one, guess at the others. Probably the others
Just like the one you see, pull eagerly, and so
They face you, back to where… but you don’t know their language
Wherever they are dragging you, not really pulling
You now, not for a while now, no. The one you see
Grins a tight grin, hair golden as the undercarriage
Of the white toy car you thought, when you were smaller than
These children must be, are, you thought the car, its golden
Exhaust, had accidentally been packaged as
An ordinary toy, had accidentally
Been sold to you, had been meant for a prince, skin white as
The plastic underneath the flaked-off gold, a grayish
White, the one crying, shoving you with all his strength
- Didymus, Meaning the Twin
You woke with an expansive feeling, many feelings
Lambent, that grease with light the vague peripheries
Of your unwelcome vantage in the only basket
With four good wheels at the laundromat. The fogged change fills
The center of your vision, though you don’t believe
It’s there, though you have mourned its coming since it came
The owner and his children popcorn into view
From nowhere, from the seed of the possibility
This business at which no one seems to work might none
-theless be owned, the children for some reason un
-imaginable, though you’re sure you saw them once
One of the three. But if you’ve only ever seen
One child, how do you know you’ve ever seen a child? Though
The children fight to steal you from the basket, they
Can’t be imagined, even the one you see. What wave
Will take you if you’ve only ever seen one moon
Now each child takes a limb, and their exhausted father
Your torso, leaving one limb free. But which? You can’t
In the tangle, tell. In the tangle, you. Isn’t it true
They, as they struggle to remove you from the basket
Are struggling to get away, each child from the other
Children, and from the father, and the father from
The children, two of whom you still don’t see? The palm
Tree on the traffic island, isn’t it a long
-necked dinosaur, the leaves a leafy wig, its body
Trapped in the earth, the spheres of nothing where the co
-conuts should be, its milk-rich head, for you are thirsty
