Action at a Distance
       

Greet the summers of childhood and stone.
Greet the the's the a's the an's the tongue
sifted through and outspit.

I went to sheets with a new language
and my old country sighed.
In it I had discovered the lonely thrill, much too inadequate

for a body that hairs.
Hirsute me surfaced in Kentucky.
Whoever speaks of satisfactory humpty-dumpty within frenzy of

nationalism is a fool.
I left the sea.
Before I left the sea, I left the mountains.

For my country contains twain: place of birth
and place of bath.
Blessed small me, Tito's pioneer, poking holes

in Herzegovina's valleys and dales, adding to the volume
of the Adriatic.
Adriatic: like a sibling. For twenty years I've failed to adjust

to Morton salt.
I carried in my left pocket the tears the country
packed. Tried to cry my own but Brandon and Kelly and Beverly

Hills occupied the rest. I couldn't help it, country.
You were something of a scandal.
Do you miss me as much as I think

about you? The jigs of history made you younger
than me. You pluck me dry of wise, feed me
breath of cigarettes, sludge coffee, lambs.

Where lie the days when you and I were one,
when letters united the scout with his notional womb?
Passed is passed, but the passing lasts.

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Copyright © 2021 Alen Hamza All rights reserved
from Twice There Was a Country
The Cleveland State University Poetry Center
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission