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John Godfrey

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AFL

(American as a Foreign Language)

We’re back - and the traffic moving
fender-to-fender on the freeway
lets us know we’ve not been missed.

We’re back on the beltway, the turnpike,
the highway, making lefts, hanging rights,
and turning on red;

avoiding citations for traffic violations,
yielding at intersections,
having a nice day;

we’re back in the boondocks, on dirt roads,
on blacktops, lodging in motels
with faucets that drip.

We’re back where vests and pants are rarely white
and men wear suspenders openly
without fear of embarrassment;

where biscuits and muffins still take us by surprise,
buns always come in pairs,
and twenty fags is nearly half a busload;

we’re back where adjectives, nouns, and verbs
are having some kind of identity crisis,
prepositions bulge from every phrase,

and the adverb is a seriously endangered species.
No Sir; we ain’t vacationing - we’re back
to learn the language.

Page(s) 38

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