love letter from lebanon

i've been searching for a reason
to decry this landlocked
mountainless place
that has not seen the sea
since the Cretaceous

i opened a door in El Dorado
out back the oil museum
looking for a gold
that doesn't poison
there was nothing but weathered buildings
and wind in the trees
a never-lived-in boom town
as halcyon history

the Arkansas rushes past my feet
down south in the places
we took from the raccoon-eyed people
and named after them
as if that was suitable repayment
this is not a place of honor
no highly esteemed deed
is commemorated here

i think
walking through potato fields
in the morning fog
that this is a place of misunderstanding
of misappropriating
of mispronouncing
and i feel justified
in my targeted misanthropy
but then
i think
it's not that simple
it never is

i've found no golden cities
my eyes were never masked
i've harvested no crops
i sit in a chapel marked
by gods i don't believe in, and
i am as far from the ocean
that roars in my veins
as it is possible to be

but the injustice did not start here
or end
nothing of the dishonor is unique to this place
i am not better for being born
of the sand and the sea
i would not be worse
if i'd been born of the prairie

i still haven't found a reason
when the wind rides the prairie grasses
the ocean finds me
even here