National Poetry Month : Alina Stefanescu,

"What the cowboy hat says about 'Americanism'"

          "There is room here only for 100 percent Americanism, only for those who are Americans 

and nothing else."

·       Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States

It says: who is and who isn't.

It says: power and thousands of migrant children, a new wave

          of virgin wilderness.

Stephen Miller poses in a dark cowboy hat and quotes 

vigorous manliness.

Fantasy has become a persistent symbol of iconic exclusion

          in Western movies

          white nationalism is having 

          a glamour moment.

Plenty of parents are true Americans

          tough, male, white with

          seductive fringed veils

          railed against.

Bannock, Crow, Shoshonne, Blackfeet

          displaced to make national parks.

The prop Reagan leveraged to win voters

          as Ceausescu gained support from the oppressed

          with new nationalist communism.

Gorbachev wore his cowboy hat backwards

after Reagan gave it, a gift, one tough white male

to another bold nucleus.

Reagan kept the virginity, never gifting a hat to a black head of state.

What makes America great.

Who is the unamericanist?

This poem is a remixed erasure titled and erased after Brian Calvert's editorial in High Country News, Dec. 24, 2019. All unitalicized text is taken directly from the editorial.

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama. She serves as Co-Director of PEN Birmingham. Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Prize and was published in May 2018. Her writing can be found in diverse journals, including Prairie Schooner, North American Review, FLOCK, Southern Humanities Review, Crab Creek Review, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Virga, Whale Road Review, and others. She serves as Poetry Editor for Pidgeonholes, President of Alabama State Poetry Society, Co-Founder of 100,000 Poets for Change Birmingham, and proud board member of Magic City Poetry Festival. A finalist for the 2019 Kurt Brown AWP Prize, the 2019 Greg Grummer Poetry Prize, the 2019 Frank McCourt Prize from Southhampton Review, Alina won the 2019 River Heron Poetry Prize. More online at www.alinastefanescuwriter.com or @aliner.