2018 Academy of American Poets Prize

 

 

Purveyors of dramatic declarations of place: 

sit down. I have a proposal for you. Imagine 

the body of America lying face-up, floating, 

her left hand suspended in the Atlantic tide. 

Imagine she lifts her right hand, dripping 

with the frigid Pacific, and presses it onto her 

chest to pledge allegiance. That’s where I’m 

from—“The Heart of it All,” as our license plates 

say—and if you still aren’t compelled, I could tell

you how this enormous, wet hand fell with a force 

and a splash that made the Great Lakes, such is 

her power. I could tell you that the runoff became 

a meandering ribbon of mud called the Olentangy 

river, the most beautiful thing I ever saw, swollen

with the polluted bodies of dead fish and people 

still line up all day to catch them. Now are you 

persuaded? How about this: they built Alum Creek 

basin over a graveyard and flooded the air with water. 

The soil became loose and unsettled. The bodies 

rose to the surface to reintroduce themselves—a panic 

attack disguised as a birthday party—and if you can see 

the image I’m describing, open mouths and stiff hands 

in the water, do you feel a quiver of complicity? To what 

seriously? I mean, in places like this, it’s easy to forget words 

like ecstasy; you have to make it where you can. When I 

saw the ocean for the last time, the blue-gray reminded me 

of my stepmom’s Honda Odyssey minivan, and I haven’t stopped 

laughing since. If you take love seriously, then what?