Portside

What is this a culture of?
We do not ask enough.

Car culture failed--
Suburbia failed--
too much for too little--

it is another today today and we know
the founding fathers were liars.

We have to consciously study how to be tender
with each other, Audre said.
Where is that school?

Who will you be?

The offices of the principals play blameless & beige.
The receptionists had little pink pads that said
while you were out

this dream city of gloss & stress bled
into sprawl, it was already failing in the '80s
when it was dominant but diseased, like CEOs everywhere.

I know it is too much to say so!
(The heart is a muted trumpet.)

Still life: lay your burden down in the room
quietly alone with your gun & your car keys,
American,
probing the wound of your own mess--

I call and call, you never answer.

Elizabeth Scanlon is the Editor-in-Chief of The American Poetry Review. She is the author of Whosoever Whole and Lonesome Gnosis. Her poems have appeared in many magazines, including Poetry Ireland, Poetry London, and others. She lives in Philadelphia.