Home Coming
A homecoming…
returning from whence you came
a mother’s midwestern town
a war-hero memorial
Five states in three days
at 90 MPH
mile-after-mile
past corn fields
metal grain silos
glistening in white-hot heartland sun
It was…
the land of Superman
of the “decent people”
Simple clapboard houses
always set back
nowhere to stop
along the way
The message clear…
If you’re not from here
keep moving
no solicitors
no strangers
A tribute to the war-hero relative
his WWII plane wreckage discovered
after so many decades
moldering in a German forest
Mile-long rows of American flags
Harley-riding “Rolling Thunder”
veteran escort
21-gun salute
And then at night
back at the hotel
the Republican Convention
there on the room’s flatscreen
By day…
honoring the heroic conquering
of authoritarianism
and at night…
celebrating its return
Red-white-and-blue conventioneers
symbolic assassination-attempt bandages
taped to ears
and scary “Believer” eyes
“He is risen…”
one said
Some things have changed
in the heartland
glittering Harrah’s casino hotel
even a downtown pot dispensary
But some things have not
over dinner with your people
you talking too loud and for too long
over the family patriarch
saying grace
Heads silently bowed
all except yours
…It’s all right
an older woman
pats your arm
What can be expected
someone from California
Then the next day, finding
the boarded-up stone façade
of the old family General Store
And the home itself…
abandoned, overgrown
roof caved-in at one side
But there…the front porch
where Grandma once swung
you and your brother
A wood-slat swing
symbol of a simpler time
the three of you singing off-key
“Home on the Range”
And then dawn
at the banks
of the Kentucky River
train cars rattling past
over ancient metal trestle
The same one your mother
delighted in as a young girl
A bird glides close along
the teeming muddy waters
just you and your ghosts
And a distant, gathering storm
Steven Meloan has written for Wired, the Huffington Post, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Chronicle, and SF Weekly. His fiction has appeared in SOMA Magazine, the Sonoma Valley Sun, Lummox Press, and Roadside Press, as well as at Litquake, Quiet Lightning, Library Girl, The Rapp Saloon Poetry Reading series, and other literary events. His short fiction collection, St. James Infirmary, was released in 2023 on Roadside Press, and a collaboration collection with his brother Michael, The Kind the Pharaohs Try, was released in 2024 on Naked Light Press. He is a recovered software developer, and a former busker in London, Paris, and Berlin.
