The Great American Novel
Some modern Moby Dick
pivots on notes of man
and behemoth choice—
a certain choice. A lying
awake choice. Upon a dark, dim
daily thought: stay or go,
flotsam or jetsam, anchor
to be only extraneous. Why be
tethered, prone to blight
or scourge, why be daily
dithering over a year
in numbers? I think they are
symbolic, heavy and swollen.
Farther out, a derrick,
barnacle-ridden mini ships
(tribute to FDR) and several sailors
or laborers assist his lineage.
All terribly small,
all potent tempests.
From here they live
a world away. In separate
orbit, on a pump of grease
slick with nothing to do
with roots and dirt, the
gnarled mess of urban planning.
Somebody constructed the crane,
the same-name bird who thrives
on fish and grain. Somebody taught
me to sow attentively, arrange
the rows of starts so they are
connectedly singular. Give us strength.
Somebody rules us all.
July Westhale is the award-winning author of Via Negativa, Trailer Trash (selected for the 2016 Kore Press Book Prize), The Cavalcade, and Occasionally Accurate Science. Her most recent poetry can be found in The National Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, CALYX, Rappahannock Review, Tupelo Quarterly, RHINO, Lunch Ticket, and Quarterly West. Her essays have been nominated for Best American Essays and have appeared in McSweeney’s, Autostraddle, and The Huffington Post. She is the 2018 University of Arizona Poetry Center Fellow, and the 2019 Writer-in-Residence at Alley Cat Books.