I came from the West

I came from the West
to the forest my people
crawled out of
before they skipped across
the ocean for freedom
and racism and wealth
gaps and thigh gaps
and stars and stripes
and bars and all that
ain’t that grand old flag
waving over fields of grain
and greyed out HDTVs
from last week in the junkyard
in the front yard
in the forest where I found
classicism and classism
and old roots run deep
but not deep enough
to hide from the seeds that fall
from the boughs of the trees
we have back West
where they reach over the sea
and drop me into my past

By Andrew Herm

Biography:

Andrew is an American teaching English to Germans in Hannover. He received a BA in literature at a small college, an MA in the Humanities at a big university, and then cycled over the Alps and decided to stay in Europe. He is currently attempting to find a moral compass; he also enjoys riding his bike through the Eilenriede, re-reading Lord of the Rings, and has a tattoo of the Deathly Hallows on his forearm, which people seem to either enjoy or make fun of.