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Jessie Lynn McMainsRacine Poet Laureate, 2015-2017Jessie's been writing and self-publishing their work in zines and chapbooks since the mid-'90s and has traveled across the U.S. and Canada as a spoken word poet. They've twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction, and once for the Best of the Net in poetry. They're the owner/editor of Bone & Ink Press, a musician, workshop instructor, visual artist, occasional DJ/podcaster, and a former burlesque and sideshow performer. They find themselves perpetually melancholy, restless, and nostalgic, in love with undying spirit of punk rock and the power of storytelling. They've been published widely, including in 10 Poems By, an e-chapbook from Hello America, a split chapbook with Misha Bee Speck, and It's Like the 'Watch the Throne' of Tender Punk Poems. Their most recent work may be found in The Girl with the Most Cake: Poems about Courtney Love and Forget the Fuck Away from Me, available at their etsy shop.
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I'm in a relationship with America and it's complicated
by Jessie Lynn McMains
On her birthday, we celebrated with barbecue and cheap
beer. I planted a red, white, and blue flag in the flowerpot
on my front porch, then serenaded her with the words of
Allen Ginsberg and James Baldwin. I said: I’ve given you
all and now I’m nothing. I love you more than any other country
in this world, so I insist on my right to criticize you perpetually.
I told her that maybe it was time, finally, for me to leave. She
cracked open another red, white, and blue can.
She took a long pull and laughed. She’d heard it all before,
but I went on: Dating you means my identity’s all confused.
In heart, I am a patriot. In heart, I am an American; in heart,
I am a patriot; in heart, I am an American anarchist. And
I have a lot of guilt. I feel guilty about loving you so much
cuz you keep killing your other lovers. It’s fucked up. I love
you but you’ve got me up all night, crying, shaking anxious.
She smiled, dug some corn from between her teeth with a
sharp, red fingernail. Said: Nice Patti Smith reference. But
tell me, in your own words, why you think we should break up.
So I gave her my list. Mentioned police brutality and white
supremacy, big corporations and anti-trans bathroom laws.
Too many guns and no real safety. Abortion clinic bombers
and the surveillance state. No money to be found for her
starving artists, her fast-food fry cooks, her huddled masses.
Corrupt politicians, endless wars, histories of genocide
and slavery. And the crazed, I-wanna-claw-my-skin-off
sensation of knowing my white, raised-middle-class, straight-
and-cis-passing self has advantages other folks don’t, even
though I wish none of that shit mattered.
She placed a Marlboro Red between her lips, lit it with the
blue flame of a sparkler. And that just reminded me why I
love her, that no-fucks-given, larger-than-life brashness. I
started to think of all the other things I love about her: Sun
and Stax and Memphis BBQ. Small businesses and small
town punk scenes, street musicians and Main Streets. Break-
dancers and hoop-shooters, baseball diamonds and vacant
lots. New York and New Orleans. The wheat and corn fields
of the plains, the high hot desert and the Blue Ridge Mountains,
the Great Lakes and the Dirty South. California to Pennsylvania
and everywhere in between. Bruce Springsteen and Beat
poetry, Indigenous resistance, queers bashing back, people
creating their own culture and community. Community
gardens, co-op kitchens, microbreweries and moonshiners.
The lonesome howl of far-off trains and the glint of headlights
on the freeway at night.
I sighed. She stubbed out her cigarette, said: Get me another
chicken leg, babe. She gnawed it down to the bone and the
barbecue sauce on her lips looked like smeared lipstick, or
blood. You’re beautiful, I said. No shit, she said, then — You
know you’re never gonna leave me, hon. “Hon” rolled off
her tongue like she was a diner waitress asking me, What’ll
ya have? And it exploded over me like a firecracker, boomed
in my heart like a hot jazz number — she was right. My
threats of departure are empty. She’s my diner waitress,
serving me apple pie a la mode with one hand and stark truth
with the other. She’s my sharpshooter Annie Oakley, my
freedom fighter Harriet Tubman, my grease-stained Boxcar
Bertha, my tarnished copper Mother of Exiles. She’s my
lovely-muscled Rosie the Riveter, my welfare queen, my hooker
with a heart of gold. She’s every goddamn stereo- and arche-
type all rolled up into one messy bitch of a country.
As though she could read my mind, she said: Yeah, I’m a
bitch, but I’m your bitch. I laid my head in her warm lap.
She stroked my hair for a minute, then yanked it, just hard
enough to let me know who’s boss. See, babe? she said.
I may keep you up nights crying, wishing I were kinder,
but no gentle woman would ever feel so much
like home.
beer. I planted a red, white, and blue flag in the flowerpot
on my front porch, then serenaded her with the words of
Allen Ginsberg and James Baldwin. I said: I’ve given you
all and now I’m nothing. I love you more than any other country
in this world, so I insist on my right to criticize you perpetually.
I told her that maybe it was time, finally, for me to leave. She
cracked open another red, white, and blue can.
She took a long pull and laughed. She’d heard it all before,
but I went on: Dating you means my identity’s all confused.
In heart, I am a patriot. In heart, I am an American; in heart,
I am a patriot; in heart, I am an American anarchist. And
I have a lot of guilt. I feel guilty about loving you so much
cuz you keep killing your other lovers. It’s fucked up. I love
you but you’ve got me up all night, crying, shaking anxious.
She smiled, dug some corn from between her teeth with a
sharp, red fingernail. Said: Nice Patti Smith reference. But
tell me, in your own words, why you think we should break up.
So I gave her my list. Mentioned police brutality and white
supremacy, big corporations and anti-trans bathroom laws.
Too many guns and no real safety. Abortion clinic bombers
and the surveillance state. No money to be found for her
starving artists, her fast-food fry cooks, her huddled masses.
Corrupt politicians, endless wars, histories of genocide
and slavery. And the crazed, I-wanna-claw-my-skin-off
sensation of knowing my white, raised-middle-class, straight-
and-cis-passing self has advantages other folks don’t, even
though I wish none of that shit mattered.
She placed a Marlboro Red between her lips, lit it with the
blue flame of a sparkler. And that just reminded me why I
love her, that no-fucks-given, larger-than-life brashness. I
started to think of all the other things I love about her: Sun
and Stax and Memphis BBQ. Small businesses and small
town punk scenes, street musicians and Main Streets. Break-
dancers and hoop-shooters, baseball diamonds and vacant
lots. New York and New Orleans. The wheat and corn fields
of the plains, the high hot desert and the Blue Ridge Mountains,
the Great Lakes and the Dirty South. California to Pennsylvania
and everywhere in between. Bruce Springsteen and Beat
poetry, Indigenous resistance, queers bashing back, people
creating their own culture and community. Community
gardens, co-op kitchens, microbreweries and moonshiners.
The lonesome howl of far-off trains and the glint of headlights
on the freeway at night.
I sighed. She stubbed out her cigarette, said: Get me another
chicken leg, babe. She gnawed it down to the bone and the
barbecue sauce on her lips looked like smeared lipstick, or
blood. You’re beautiful, I said. No shit, she said, then — You
know you’re never gonna leave me, hon. “Hon” rolled off
her tongue like she was a diner waitress asking me, What’ll
ya have? And it exploded over me like a firecracker, boomed
in my heart like a hot jazz number — she was right. My
threats of departure are empty. She’s my diner waitress,
serving me apple pie a la mode with one hand and stark truth
with the other. She’s my sharpshooter Annie Oakley, my
freedom fighter Harriet Tubman, my grease-stained Boxcar
Bertha, my tarnished copper Mother of Exiles. She’s my
lovely-muscled Rosie the Riveter, my welfare queen, my hooker
with a heart of gold. She’s every goddamn stereo- and arche-
type all rolled up into one messy bitch of a country.
As though she could read my mind, she said: Yeah, I’m a
bitch, but I’m your bitch. I laid my head in her warm lap.
She stroked my hair for a minute, then yanked it, just hard
enough to let me know who’s boss. See, babe? she said.
I may keep you up nights crying, wishing I were kinder,
but no gentle woman would ever feel so much
like home.
