Monday, July 31, 2023

DEAR JASON ALDEAN

by Laurie Rosen




In my little town there were

moms at home doing laundry,

schools we could walk to,

one car in every driveway, sometimes two. 


Our neighborhoods teemed with children —

kick ball or wiffle ball in the middle of the street.

There was a bowling alley, ice cream parlor

and golf driving range, 


In my little town there were teachers 

who required us to memorize poems, 

write haikus, read Icarus, Hiroshima,

Shakespeare and the Bible. 


And in my little town, a football coach taught 

health class. A young teacher who spoke

openly on the VietNam war, civil rights 

and the slaughter of indigenous people


was disappeared, replaced

by an elderly retired teacher who bored us 

with dates and white washed facts,

screamed at us to pay attention. 


Our only lake, once a summer retreat, 

was declared a Superfund waste site. 

There was rampant drug and alcohol abuse, 

breast cancer, brain tumors, overdoses and suicides. 


In my little town, mostly white and Christian,

we sang China Town is Burning down, 

during recess, to the tune of ring-around-the-rosy 

at the one Chinese American boy 


in our third grade class, who stood

off to the side, while we held hands 

and skipped round and round.



Laurie Rosen is a lifelong New Englander. Her poetry has appeared in The Muddy River Poetry Review, Peregrine, Oddball Magazine, Gyroscope Review, The New Verse News, The Inquisitive Eater: a journal of  The New School, One Art, and elsewhere.