Nod at Me

by Alexandra Gold, age 17

“nod at me nod at the rooftop do it nod / acknowledge the bathtub on the penthouse garden where i am with my friends taking photos in cowboy boots / and / slips in monochromatic feels / we are 22 / we are new york”

nod at me nod at the rooftop do it nod

acknowledge the bathtub on the penthouse garden where i am with my friends taking photos in cowboy boots

and

slips in monochromatic feels

we are 22

we are new york

and

we are living like western gods so

conceited

taking photos in red cowboy boots on the fourth of july like real americans not millennials

and i nod that barbaric yawp

biting at raw U.S. air

at the marks seen through fake silk a material that lost its name scaling the stairs to the rooftop and i found mine in people who know that photos should be zoomed at angles and only in high waisted white underwear on firescapes if not rooftops

where people don’t nod even if you nod please nod please validate our bathtub party

on the fourth of american july and nod

come in and join us

red white and blue bubble bath drowns out balcony noise of

the spice girls on top of this patio looking like nineties does seventies wrong in the south

why aren’t you nodding

at whisky stained flags marking this territory as the girls

join our cult instead

where we fear the laundromat so all our scarves remain signals in the wind yelling

we are poor! we are poor millennials!

the sun she agrees with us wiping the shadows of laundry away her smoldering beams

the natural world is all on our side and yet

you glare on

why look down why look down at that goddamn paper clip you don’t even know if its silver or gold you can look at me clearly im golden were glowing like goddamn aphrodite in spurs

gold spurs spurring dirty old bathtub water we dump off the roof onto people who won’t nod

but even they nod at you look at you why aren’t you nodding

you step over the paper clip into reality into manhattan where bathtubs are indoors and life is all silver not gold

happy fourth of july this is america where no one no gods just millennials

nod transcendentalist yawps in the sky

it’s the young who know it’s still a paperclip

silver new york at most

why aren’t you nodding america

this is our country

bow down to your gods