Rushmore (Winner of the James Merrill Prize for Poetry)

Who let that man, that prick! Cleave at my thighs,
Proclaim my spots;
My mineral salt in his mouth-- Patriotism and pride

Where silence and echo Once settled
Sandstone stoicism
And my grin impervious Knowing that behind
These sets of Jesus-loving Unmoving, Anglo, colossal, No, monstrous

Gestures
I erode myself

Just one tectonic stutter
And ay dios mio
The honeybees and buffaloes
Will feast in the eyelids
A sioux tsunami will render
Heroic noses
Into the stumbled pebbles under the trout

As if dormancy were true
As if complacency were not the darting eyes That claim me
I was berated
My colossus is thick and opaque
As the delta of a midriff
As sticky as a hornet’s nest
As virginal as mongrelitude