In search of my own survival I ventured America which opened its mouth to say: Bring money. Now I am an American souvenir: Silver-bellied, I am a diner with silver-bellied cousins from city to city; all night pink and white donut shop light, smiling through my teeth for your convenience by 4 a.m., unamused by your antics. Thin-glassed, I am factory, killing myself. I am a smokestack, bleeding steam. Brick, faced with names, I am strange graffiti, a glitzy billboard in between steeples, two major markets, a cinema, arches, one hundred bars and too many car lots strung up with circus lights. Fluorescently glowing, I am a peach in the vegetable aisle, some cherry dessert, the apple in somebody's pie, and honey. Am I ever at one with my fast-food asphalt landscape - shipped fresh daily to the corner store like the morning paper - but my own world news - I am the psychological thriller I keep going back to. The drama every night. The story at eleven. Whatever the weather permits. Haphazardly charted, a galaxy. I am prediction, history, fiction. Jammed in grey drizzle and inching, I am rain weeping into the willows dripping onto the shoulders of the road. Unmarked paths. Unfathomable distances
										to drop. My gawd, I am my own small bombs going off and my own religion. I am the question. The glisten of stars. My mother's sometimes horrible child but scope of horizon - brilliant - a miniature solar system brimming with more than one million electrons orbiting miles of my skin. An odd vibration. A discomforting hiss. I am a random mix of frequencies. Chance. Force. My own creator each day. Sustainer. Punisher. Judge. Great warrior rising to clear the sky every morning, too abstract to understand - I am on my knees again today. I am on my Make a Good God to Pray to Parade. All About Shadows and Light Queen, Seeker of Starbright and Prayer, Keeper of gardens at night and night without wolf-fear - I am all my souvenirs - I am not a corner, bare, to fill. I am something growing in every room. Out of darkness, the sound of birds, shaking their dreams, a forest swarming, Madonna in the yard, open-armed, a serpent under her feet. Half-hidden I am buried beneath the drama which always shines red but I am singing and - despite overwhelming evidence - I may come into my own once again at this time.
Marylisa DeDomenicis

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