Handsome George
By Tim Siebles

When it comes to my country
I'm like a chipmunk     snarling
at an avalanche, like a dragonfly

slamming its sharp beak
into the wilding steel
of an eighteen-wheeler. I hate

to throw my weight around--
flipping trucks, turning back
half a mountain of marauding stone,

but I've got the good reasons. I got
the uncounted votes. I have as many
legs as a millipede     which explains

the way I waltz, why some of me
can can-can while the rest of me
just bops. It's hard for me not to

feel perky     with Handsome George
in the White House, with the police
so ready to serenade my profile--

my silhouette, the sexiest rose
in America's garden. And speaking
in-ter-na-tion-al-ly:

why wonder what coulda-shoulda?
Let's just globalize. Let's bomb
everywhere     just in case some small nation

thinks we ain't got the brass papayas, baby.
I don't like to exaggerize. I don't
mean to seem the way I be,

but with this one big tree
dropping fruit all over us, with its
long shade like a collie's lolli-lick

on the glad face of the world,
I wonder how anybody can keep
from crowing chim-chimminy, chim-chimminy

chim-chim cheree.

Copyright © Tim Seibles. All rights reserved. Used by permission of the author

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