American Dream
the bullet hits doesn’t
shatter the windshield
rippling into a sea
glass a gleam oh light
the bullet hits bounces
back to the barrel
revolving counterclockwise
until the first bullet
becomes but a bore
left by a sandworm
on a quiet beach far
away the bullet hits
fails hits the concrete
a poet yesterday
side-walked on dreaming
the impossible light
sun shimmers on gentle
waves lapping rocks
the bullet hits mists
into sea spray salt
the salt of kiss
that quickens the lips
long ago the bullet
hits breeze swept
skirts the windshield
seafoam flits the poet laughs
the bullet hits doesn’t
leave a trace in the sand
that will be fused into glass
years from this moment
the bullet hits no
doesn’t even exit
the bullet doesn’t
exist the poet
walks into the sea
Beatrice Szymkowiak is a French-American writer, translator, and scholar. She is the author of Red Zone (Finishing Line Press, 2018), a poetry chapbook, as well as the recipient of the 2022 Agha Shahid Ali Prize in Poetry for her full-length collection B/RDS (University of Utah Press, 2023). Her work has also appeared in many poetry magazines.
Read three poems by Beatrice Szymkowiak from B/RDS also appearing in Terrain.org.
Read other Letters to America online or in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, published in partnership with Trinity University Press.
Header photo by ZafranZakil, courtesy Shutterstock.
