Makeover


Birthplaces
                               cast-off
                                                 before welcoming steel.
Inbetween the old country,
                               statuesque Republic,
                                                 Atlantic tides incite
blankness, a clean wipe
                               of familial pools
                                                 welling in the blood.
On the continental shelf
                               of America, they’re taught
                                                 the anomaly of past,
throwing the sum total
                               of muses to starboard.
                                                 Some manners should not
be recovered after
                               the serpent sheds
                                                 its scales. It is by mind
they dry dock as Americans;
                               with newborn feet
                                                 stumble onto the west.