I live in America

Alyssa Jordan || Fall 2020

I do not like America. I do not like the way American men stare at me. 

I pit myself against America. 

    I am homeless in America. I am unloved in America. I am

objectified    in America. 

“Home” is illusive. 

When I was 18, I did not have an address. 

When I was 18, I stayed in a motel in America.

America didn’t love me.

America laughs in my face. Men I do not know laugh in my face. 

America wants to decide what I do with my body.

America thinks this is America’s body.

 My body is America.

My mind is my own. 

I do not like the way American men dissect and

probe my body

like they divvy up the last piece of cake.

America’s notion of a home is merely a house with pictures

and fist-sized holes in plastered walls.

It tells me my uterus is a home. 

How should I know what a home is? 

My body is valuable (contingent on its ability to produce). 

No one loves me in America. There are no photographs on my walls. 

Posters and paintings fill space where familiar faces should.       Evicted is a nasty word.

I don’t love America. 

 America doesn’t love me. 

    I write about America, but my penmanship is messy. 

Delusion lives in America. I’ve been robbed in America 

Of both my pride and my body.