Other countries seem desperate to tell us
how we look to foreign eyes, as if we were
as blind as the cave fish or the mole.

Cowboys, racists, patriots, slumlords – we
know it’s all true – endless highways, patchwork
farms, strip malls and Disney World.

We killed the Indians and enslaved
the Africans. We birthed jazz and the auto
and skyscrapers and the bomb.

And dreamers still say,
the myth aglow in their eyes:
“I want to go to America.”