About

THE GRATEFUL DEAD

I like the word Masoretic but feel

Disinclined to use it in a sentence

Scrying instead my platelets

And bad dreams. Something

Keeps sleeping against

Me that is not the person

Beside me. By “against”

I mean against. My lack

Of beauty was supposed

To be some fault of my own.

They would have had me believe

This entire “democracy” was an inner defect

Bartering my hooked nose against

Your virtuosity I walked the line

Between pity and horror having come

Here for one reason and one reason only:

To have become at last American.

“They Dream Only Of America” is a poem

By John Ashbery. …