In ALABAMA I ran across a park so green: the trees green, the sky green, the river green, the houses green, & the little dog barked a green mean thing.
In ALASKA, during the anxious hour when the cat screamed from my broken window, I imagined my body a sheet of ice floating in a flooded river.
In ARIZONA I jumped from rock to rock & fell on a barrel cactus. My hands, two blood moons. Each needle, a hook to catch fish. The river nowhere to be found.
In ARKANSAS I cried to feed the river. I cut my tears into tiny pieces for the river’s pincer grasp, in strips for the river’s palmar grab. I cut my tears to feed the river who moved his head away: Yuck!
In CALIFORNIA I watched my mother’s hair fall out. Her eyes ran dark-river currents to her chest. Her nails were scorpions that glowed blue against white bedding. The radio played a tune about sex that made me want to break the speaker with my fist.
In COLORADO I rode a river brown as clay in the blow-up kayak. When the kayak popped I rode the river on my hands and knees lifting pebbles covered in worms.
In CONNECTICUT I dropped brie on the parquet at the reading. I was the only one invited to dinner who had not graduated from an Ivy League. I spilled red wine on a white tablecloth & joked: It was a glass, not a river!
In DELAWARE a man moved a river in a painting that hung over my bed. Or did a man wade through a river in a painting that hung over my bed? I spent the night with many men & many rivers in paintings that hung around my bed.
In FLORIDA the river, the sea, & every bar glowed a cheap iridescent blue. Every day I drove by a motel where a bouquet of blue plastic roses hung tired. Blue plastic roses to remember those who died in a shooting. Above us all a billboard with a handgun—a gun show was coming to town.
In GEORGIA I stood on the lip of a stage & read poems about a man who loved me so much he tried to kill me & then was disappeared. I read poems about the river that witnessed it all. After, a woman told me, I feel sorry for you. I bled through my skirt in the back of the Lyft.
In HAWAII there’s a conservancy where poets are invited to plant palm trees. I wonder if I will ever write poems that will plant palm trees. I wonder what color the rivers are in a place with native palm trees. I wonder a river.
In IDAHO I made love under the buzz of fluorescent motel lights. From the window a river called my name, but I did not leave those starchy sheets to answer. If a life without water is death, I wanted it.
In ILLINOIS the streets were covered in mirrors made of a frozen river’s gasp. Two of me everywhere, I smiled so hard my jaw sprained.
In INDIANA I counted the barns, the silos, the little brown sheds that sat in fields. I looked for water. I looked for rivers. I looked for the sea.
In IOWA the novelist said he was searching for a river. The novelist said he was searching for the river between a woman’s legs. His teeth shone gold by candlelight.
In KANSAS there are rivers made of rain, made of drainage, made of fecal chloroform. There are rivers made of water you cannot graze with a five-fingered glove.
In KENTUCKY I was a good American woman and watched as a man slapped his wife at the state fair. A river of people parted around them.
In LOUISIANA I got drunk on moonlight & danced with my suegra. She apologized & I apologized. Our feet brought clouds down to earth in the river’s bank.
In MAINE I caught a trout & took it home. I kept the fish in the fridge for days. I enjoyed the stench, the blood-brown eyes, the dark river it leaked on the clear plastic shelf.
In MARYLAND I rode a bus through strip malls that could have been anywhere in America: Target, Tuesday Morning, Bed Bath & Beyond. There was a river somewhere, but what discount could a river offer me?
In MASSACHUSETTS I refused to leave the hotel room for the reading. I curled up in bed. I dimmed the lights & closed the curtains. I rocked myself shut & breathed into a paper bag. I wanted the ecstasy of drowning in my riverbed.
In MICHIGAN I was all quiet. My body was all snow. My body was all small, all melt, all river.
In MINNESOTA I became desperate as a dog. I hid my book in an editor’s coat pocket. Desperate as a dog looking for water I drank from the river, I drank from the creek.
In MISSISSIPPI the cicadas followed me everywhere I went like a madman’s chime. I asked for strong liquor, a river to drown in. I asked for a gun, & when I got neither I packed my bags & went on the run.
In MISSOURI the mentor took me out to eat. She read me poems. She told me stories. The mentor appears wherever a river has been moved, dried, dammed. This poem has been moved, dried, dammed.
In MONTANA a stranger told me about a river that would cure me. I went to the river that would cure me. I drank from the river that would cure me & said: I am cured!
In NEBRASKA I counted calories as a last-ditch effort to stay 23-thin. But 30 had already hit hard, so I ran by the river & swatted at fleas in low grasses.
In NEVADA I played corridos on the bar’s jukebox. I sang about a river that broke my life. Give me a few drinks & I forget northern etiquette. The bartender cut the music & asked me to leave.
In NEW HAMPSHIRE I reread this poem from beginning to end in the empty hotel room. The ceiling opened & a river poured over me.
In NEW JERSEY there was a blackout. Without electricity, I walked the streets in erasure. A roar from the river churned the lights back on.
In NEW MEXICO I cleared the park of the addict’s needles before marrying my husband in my makeshift gown. I made friends with the women who worked my street corner. I watched a man drink a bottle of mouthwash & piss a river for scrub.
In NEW YORK they imported me as an artist for the weekend. Everywhere I went artists asked me when I had done my New York years. I treat New York like water does the rivers that flow through Manhattan. I visit & clamor, then leave.
In NORTH CAROLINA I sat in one corner of the living room, the tv in the other. The news was talking ugly about El Paso again. I became suspended in a river of electricity. Poetry had taken me far, far away into this America, these United States.
In NORTH DAKOTA I scraped tar off my shoe & spit tobacco in the dirt. I imagined a horse so thirsty that when it found a river, it drank until its belly burst. My therapist asked if I’d had any suicidal ideation. I always answer the same: No.
In OHIO I stayed in every bed & breakfast the state offers. Over scones & black coffee, I was asked by innkeeper after innkeeper if I knew any narcos. Once, I was asked: Do people really cross the Rio Grande in shorts come winter?
In OKLAHOMA I became a river in need of a dirt cradle. I needed dirt to cradle all the water that was boiling inside of me. I bailed my body of water with a spoon.
In OREGON I wet my birth certificate, my passport, my social security card. I wet the water bill, the food store coupons, the maps I used to find my way to rivers I could wet. Waist-deep I wet.
In PENNSYLVANIA I wanted art to heal me. I ran my fingers across a river in a canvas. The river was dry, just like the river back home.
In RHODE ISLAND I cried when the baby cried. I cried & cried & cried & cried. A river is a mother that pushes her children downstream.
In SOUTH CAROLINA, ounce by ounce, I drank any old thing the dark-haired bartenders put in front of me. I wanted to be baptized in their river. I didn’t want to die, but I wanted my crown of thorns bloody.
In SOUTH DAKOTA my thirst consumed me. My eyes flaked & peeled . . . I wanted water. I found a river but could not bring myself to drink.
In TENNESSEE a woman asked why I was still wearing a mask. She asked if there was a new virus going around that she didn’t know about. I told her: I’m still wearing a mask because I’m ugly. I found a river & drank it dry.
In TEXAS I only wanted to go home. I went to the river that raised me, the bars that drank me, the mountains that grazed me. Everywhere I went people told me I was a stranger. I cried tears no one wants to hear about.
In UTAH I searched the men I met for rivers that had gone missing. I traced each man’s tattoo of a coyote, each tattoo of red rocks. How does a river go missing?
In VERMONT I imagined the snow a river come down to drown me. I repeated: Today, Natalie killed herself . . . Today, Natalie shot herself . . . Today . . . I took pills filled with tiny spheres I moved across my kitchen counter like mercury in a shattered thermometer.
In VIRGINIA I lit a candle to San Judas & said I’d cut my hair off if he granted me peace. The next day, I went to the river to find peace. I could not stop crying. In Virginia San Judas shunned me. In Virginia I kept my hair long.
In WASHINGTON I scowled at beautiful women. I barked at ugly men. I wanted a river in my lover’s eyes. I was water witch. I was neon devil.
In WEST VIRGINIA I saw an exhibit on clogging. I was a foreigner in a foreign land. Was this not part of my country too? I swam in a river. I felt no connection.
In WISCONSIN my father was raised. His stories are all Americana: backyards & sidewalks & fourth of July. His stories are all Americana: the girl who stabbed her teacher, the man who drowned his wife in a river in front of their kids, the flasher at the playground by school.
In WYOMING I was afraid of the poem. I was afraid of writing a poem. What would my son think of the pain of his mother? What use had I for poetry that did not risk falling off a creased cliff? I found a river & wrote to it. From the current, the poems returned.
