Indiana's got my blood,
took it in the tobacco field,
when the blisters finally broke
and ran, oozed their friction-tears
into the soil. It's a salted earth.
Nothing will rise above it anymore.

Indiana doesn't want me,
doesn't want my brown lover,
my homosexual brother. Our flaws
are not homey, not hay-smelling,
not gingham-patterned. We don't
grow, don't stand tall on
rolling hills, silhouetted against
skies so endlessly blue.
We're not scarecrows, no blackbirds
hover about our brows, speculating.

Indiana's got its sun, its circular
winds, funnel clouds looming,
monsters hulking on a grey horizon.
It's got its barbed wire, the kind
that wraps itself around my neck,
right before the ground drops out,
leaves me hanging, a strange crop
ready for an Autumn harvest.

09/09/2005

Author's Note: A poem for the writing.com slam final round. We were supposed to write two poems, one positive, one negative, about the same subject. This is "Indiana? Ew."

Posted on 09/10/2005
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