Wisconsin, Summer

It’s July. I’m floating belly up on Devil’s Lake when two fighter jets fly overhead, tearing the blue heaven open. On the shore, independence dazes the little children, blue and red and white glow sticks cuff their wrists, star-spangled faces freckled for war. A boy asks his mom if it’s America's birthday. And I want to tell him, child, listen to the violins and the artillery, the cello and echo of gunshots at once. Inhale the dusk, the gunpowder, the gust of weed from drunk white boys singing the national anthem next to the cops, teenagers not yet bodied by violence. Revel with me at the north star, at the fire -works, at the simple American joy of blowing things up, as they did back home in the Philippines from 1899 to 1902 to beyond. Celebrate with me this freedom as sweet as milk and honey, as a lozenge on my tongue in the shape of a promise -d land. I want to tell him this was the life I asked for and I have nothing. Jesus, I have nothing but the names of the birds in Wisconsin—a blackbird, a thrush, a cardinal. I saw one dead on the asphalt with no clear injury. Its red body burned with a former life, and I wished not to face its destiny. When I carried its lifeless frame to the grass, I wanted nothing for that poor thing, nothing but mercy.