Beatnik Speakeasy Place

image borrowed from bing

A roughed up, beat up, beat down, beatnik speakeasy piece.


Redneck hippies, peaceful fools, drooling over the violations of the Golden Rule. See the sagebrush woman, scorned of the Milky Way, cringing at the sun's revelations. Lit up, we who do not belong, the underdog, unshaven, wearing threadbare, baggy clothes.

What are you doing? I am rehearsing for a role as the dead woman's wanton, heartbroken, bag lady daughter.

Dispossessed, poor of spirit and of purse, desperate to belong to something and not be shunned, I tiptoe past the pointy-eyed residents of America's aspiring 21st-century South African state of racist and classist sentiment.

White trash girl, sagging moonlit haunted eyes, portrait of mourning, symbol of the great divide. Lost misfit prowling the American Empire for a tribe, for somewhere to sink my footsteps and recover my pride.

Hear, oh Satan, the furrowed faces bellowing for blood, and watch the scabby-kneed children imitate their parents' hatred of anything different. If it looks different from us, it's bad. If it walks different, it's bad, you know. If it walks different, if it walks at all among our palace estates, suspect it of badness and shoot it dead with venom-tipped arrows of speech and bullets bought on the cheap at the headwaters of America's consumer greatness, the empire of more for less.

Examine my headdress. Examine my sash. Examine my matches, Mr. Policeman. Are they still legal? Two refrigerators to chill the fresh caught blood. Two refrigerators to chill the sun. Phantoms walk in the urban jungle, phantoms of the cornstalk and speaking ventricle, phantoms riding the rainbow of honey-do lists. Honey, I miss you, honey, move over, honey, you've got to go shopping at the mall with me, honey, you've got to look like an ad for Banana Republic or The Gap. You've got to dress like you're got so much cash. You've got to pass for a rich white somebody. Where's your midsize SUV? Where's your shiny new sedan?

It's bad, you know. It looks different. It's bad you know. It's brown and blue. Let's see if it bleeds red. It's bad, you know. It fell off the 21st century somewhere near Alabama, somewhere near Timbuktu.

Out near Albuquerque, the man bought a lot of land. Over the river, through the lands of Jim Crow, the laundromat, over the dead doggie's head, just past the snakes slurping the dew off the grass, there is the American Dream gone bad. It was the land of milk and honey until Donald Trump and his royal kinsmen class turned it into resorts and casinos and golf clubs for their money to grow and our soul to perish.

Is that the ghost of my mother or the Statue of Liberty crying? Who replaced her eternal torch with a keg tap and a Smith and Wesson?

It's the muzzle for me. It's what my country's got to give. It's the American gift to the new century. Fantasy lands the planes safely. Fantasy gets the fear stain out of the pants. Fantasy murmurs, "Ignatia, love, natrum muriaticum, dollie, aurum met, aurum met, wait twenty minutes and have some bread. It's fresh from the food bank and mold free."

What ails you, child? What phantoms tear round inside your head? What did the good doctor miss when you pulled back your ribs and revealed the amputated muscle still and clammy there, softly hissing?

I will hold your hand, Anne Sexton. I will laugh with you, Sylvia Plath. I will find the furious bandersnatch and offer to bathe it in strawberry wine for our journey beyond Capricorn, past the legions of stars singing me your somber lullabies. I'll taste your strawberries. I'll drink your sweet wine. A million tomorrows shall all pass away and a million nightmares reach for me as I reject the madness of my country's newest innovations racing toward the pocketbooks of the those worthy of ownership, worthy of envy, worthy of fresh bread.

Where will the ashes whisper forgiveness? When my lips touch the cherubim, when my toes float above the blades of grass, I will sing a new song for you, America, and you will finally hear me.

Jaimie Ondrea Dunn

Posted over at Memory Echoes Ink