Ambient Americana, by Isaac Rubin

You’ll find me in moth-ridden corners, dodging the depressed shuffle of trapped tourists — one footfall the echo of a million before it — skittering around like a mouse in the shtetl, huddled in snowy plains where it never rains, sheltered in Langley doorframes shattered by bombs, waiting for a Saint Bernard savior that may never come.

I was
     drifting toward pearlescent oyster shores.
     axed by an ink-blot bureaucracy.
     only meaningful in a forgotten language.
     only more meaningful when I was forgotten.

I am
     Kentucky’s track and Florida’s field.
     peanut shells spent on Yankee Stadium’s hallowed floors.
     the chopped-off name of an immigrant past.
     an old country’s new dreams, or a new country’s old ones.

I will
     hand ice cream bars to fenced-in factory workers.
     teach my English to America’s descendants.
     warm the world with imaginary kindling.
      fade to ambient americana — an endless echo of an immigrant past, the last, lost syllable that started it all.

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