In America We Trust

I apparently have a huge attraction for Katie Johnson's writing. Written a year after "Drawing of Jude", this poem makes me want to make this girl my best friend. Like before, I decided to flip randomly through the magazine and find what stood out to me most, and it may be because I had just finished watching the second Presidential Debate, but the word "America" snagged my attention immediately. It wasn't until I was creating the citation for her work that I realized the author was the same Katie Johnson I had read last week.

There's very little poetry that I fully enjoy. Richard Siken's Crush was the last work of poetry that I truly reveled in, and I read that freshman year. There's just something about the floral, uppity, roundabout way that poetry goes about things that really puts me off. Although I could never devote myself to it, spoken word has always appealed to me over pure poetry because of its tendency to be direct and poignant. That's a quality both of Johnson's pieces have that really strikes me.

"America" is a very different poem from "Drawing of Jude", but it ties in some similar themes. Sexuality and a breaking of innocence, or at least ignorance, play huge parts in both. In "America" the narrator not only speaks of her first sexual experiences, but also equates her relationship with the country to one with a guy post hookup. She's unapologetically crude; "America, we really shouldn’t be doing this without a condom. / I love you too much.... / America, get your cum off my leg." Both poems host a good deal of anger as well, even among the sex and the love that leads to the sex. That's what makes this poem both a love and a hate letter; you, or at least, this narrator, "loves too much", which leads to sex. If this narrator has just slept with America, then she has to have loved it at some point in some way.

So, yes. This poem is angry and honest and what every woman in America confronts at some point. That's another point of brilliance in this: you can replace every "America" with a man's name, like Chris, or Thomas, and suddenly it's a poem about a lover. But this piece is heartbreaking as well. We are America's children, tossed aside and abused. Driven to self destruction, told to slice vertically if we're going to kill ourselves because women and artists have no place in this society.

Johnson has so much I strive to put into my own writing. When I wrote poetry, I read every line aloud to make sure it was readable and natural. When I write fiction, I don't cut edges. There is no gross detail spared, there is no forgiveness for the more squeamish audience. I present myself and my work as it is, and if there's someone who can't handle that, then they stop reading.

Johnson, Katie. "America." Glyph 2013: 29-32. Print.