American Sonnet January 2025

The American dream: a kitchen sink

below a window over a dryer vent

where the condensation marries 

the low-angle winter sun and blooms into

periwinkle plumes like sunrise from an

airplane, like where I stand doing dishes,

the product of a place that attracted

once Mexicans and failed German farmers

and that one Scottish entomologist,

a mixed congregation of people 

made possible by homesteads and the census 

erasing Latinidad–save for five 

centuries of birthright citizenship

no suburban scene, so mundane. So secure.