Americana Stories – Poetry

Juicy by Lizzy Ke Polishan

To: 柯

You have made yourself small
on the secret cramped bus to Sunset Park
to bring me home a cheeseburger
from that place where the cheeseburgers
are oh-so-juicy.
Because here, in the Land of the Free,
the land where you can afford
what you want, what you want
to afford can’t always be found.
I’m told KFC tastes better overseas,
chicken breasts
so drippy you need to wear gloves.
I’m told you skipped class to ride cows
up mist-drenched mountains.
In a shoebox under your bed, you kept
silkworms you fed mulberry leaves
until they died. Your stories returned
me to my childhood home,
a big white house where eight people
lived and I was the only kid.
In my bassinet, I received the field
mice an uncle’s cat named
Telemachus killed for me. In the attic, I danced,
to “Crocodile Rock,” in an electric disco
ball’s multicolored light.
Let me tell you a secret.
My secret is the cheese
-burgers all taste the same to me.
    My secret is your smile
when I drove you past my old childhood home
and showed you all the holes in the fence.

__________________