Those who drank too much yesterday are waking
With earthquaking headaches. This headache
Is what passes for heritage today in America.
 
Empty bowls on the coffee table at dawn. Yeats
Warned food left out overnight entices the dead—
We have many hungry dead in America.
 
It's safer to avoid sitting on playing cards:
Respect for unknown origins. The rock paintings
At Jeffers utterly predate "America."
 
Are a poncho and a serape the same thing?
My lost godfather was Jessica Lange's lover
In the seventies, before her fame in America.
 
Some say the itchy spot we wake to on leg
Or arm is from mischievous gnomes—but we don't
Believe in such things anymore in America.
 
My mother-in-law cured her own throat tumor
By drinking raw onion juice for a year.
It's not because they're jealous that Iraqis hate America.