portfolio
looking for america
on cockroaches pt. 1:kings in america pt.1
looking for america: an introduction
“Ma’am my bus is suppos’d to go to Newark not New York”
– some man with his cat and his girlfriend who had been travelling since Atlanta told the driver,
delaying our bus for another half an hour or so.
Fuck I’m only getting to New York after midnight, I told myself.
I shoulda taken a flight I also told myself.
That is when I started questioning many of my decisions, on the back of a Greyhound from DC to Manhattan
My row was so tight I had to sit sideways.
A stop in Baltimore, the idiot parts ways
– our ship now with fewer fools.
“If I hear anybody’s electronic devices, man I promise I will surely kick you out of this bus do you hear me?”
Our conductor shouts down the alley of our classroom on 8 or something wheels
(which I am afraid is soon to be defunded).
Uttered silence, except for the voices in a foreign tongue from a man’s telephone.
The man is asked to depart, despite the revolt from some of my fellow travellers, failure to save his fate.
Fuck my life I’m only getting to New York after one or two.
I put the hand sanitizer in my hand so I don’t smell the fucking chemical toilet six seats behind.
I make small talk with the young woman sitting next to me.
“Oh you are from Long Island”
“Which part”
“Do you know any of these people, oh you do”
“It’s a small country”
The reflection of mills along the Delaware make a sky full of constellations.
Above the horizon is a gray and bright river full of suspended sediments.
(Wasn’t somewhere around here where Washington crossed the river?)
Was it one of these picture-myths
of crossing rivers with flags waving
what enticed me to come here in the first place.
Between this and my last greyhound will I understand this country?
How many graves and battlegrounds do I have to visit before making sense of it?
The bus approaches the Jersey Turnpike and the lights across the Hudson make themselves visible
Manhattan feels emptier every time I come here.
(Next time it might as well be one of those dioramas)
I leave the station, blasted by the LED lights.
Make my world spin until I cannot tell apart North from South,
East from West.
To plant me back for I feel unrooted.
To find the brittle bones of an enlightenment project.
To look for America, a task for these days.