Syllabus for American Citizenship
after Amy Sara Carroll
COURSE DESCRIPTION—Explore western individualism but lose yourself, hang your skin on a wire hanger in the coat closet. Speak American. The punch line is: this joke isn’t a joke. Shift the globe so the Western Hemisphere is centered. #NeverForget 9/11 but forget slavery and native displacement/genocide and the problems of capitalism, etc. Pull yourself up by the cops’ boot. Use collective pronouns.
ATTENDANCE POLICY—Swear it. Pledge yourself. Stand in front of a wall of TVs and eat. Buy it all. Study abroad and tell everyone you are American. If you’ve become an expert at disappearing, we know we made you this way.
GRADING— 15% Buy capitalism
15% Scapegoating
25% Forget. Forget
10% Believe in binaries
35% Believe history books written by the “winners” of war
CLASSROOM EXPECTATIONS—I look back at adolescent pictures
and I see how hard I tried
to perform a smile. Failed. But let’s suppose
the consistency, at least, is a victory
in itself. In the current post-
racial context my summer
tan lacks political symbolism.
As do the lips, as does the
ass, as the back, its curve—
how I bend, how I gain
political power by pledging allegiance
to a greater good that has no investment
in me except my blood
to stripe across bars of white.
another mo(u)rning
on another morning when I wake
twitching and stuff dozens
of sharpened pencils into bag
the heat’s hum through vent
as water down in shower
the morning everything I own
into the bag the bed
the bathtub the books
the bladder sorrow
morning can you hear the neck
jerk away toward
the squeaking throat what’s
more how many killings domestic
terror police murder dreams
sharp hands choking down show
slower drown without water
monday another mourning month
stiff pre- post- mortem
morning when the wake.
Marlin M. Jenkins was born and raised in Detroit and studied poetry in University of Michigan's MFA program. His writings have been given homes by The Collagist, Four Way Review, The Journal, and Bennington Review, among others. He is an editor for HEArt Online, and you can find him on Twitter @Marlin_Poet.