So, I wrote this poem long ago. It's all about corn. It was a fun, sad poem to write. One of my first loves is mentioned--she visited my grandpa's ranch to see her friends, my cousins (or whoever they were--second cousins once removed? They were family, and that was all that mattered). A cute little blond girl. I remember we had fun playing on top of the corn in the corn bins (still on the husk--my gramp wasn't a monster!) pretending we were helping push it down so it could go into a truck, get hulled (shelled? de-kerneled?) and get turned into sweet, sweet silage. I should've worked silage into this poem. Maybe I will someday.
So, this is a poem, and the events within are all true. There was a guy near West Point who committed suicide in a corn field, and I know of one or two more who have taken their lives in a field of Nebraska corn. It is symbolic of something, but I don't know what. Oh, and I don't know how to turn comments on. I'm working on it! Oh, and at the time of me actually being in the field and getting triggered to write this poem, I didn't have a car that used E85. That...that was a lie. Anywho....
...oh! Attentive readers will notice I didn't force 100 mentions of corn into this. I mean, I could have, but that would've been gauche.
Corn Syrup
An Ode to Corn
All
alone at night
I
stop on a county road,
flanked
by two fields of corn.
I’m
a Nebraskan.
I
feel I should
know
about corn,
know the corn.
I
get out of my car
and
hear the rustle of corn.
On
my right, a field of corn
A
field of corn
made
up of rows of corn
rows
of corn
made
up of stalks of corn
each
stalk of corn has an ear of corn
and
an ear of corn
has
about 389 kernels of corn
wedged
into a corn
cob
nestled in corn
silk
swathed in a shuck of corn.
I
wander into the corn,
this
maize of corn.
The
tassels poke out like fireworks,
proclaiming
the Coming of Corn.
I feel like John the Baptist,
dunking
myself in row upon row of corn
in
a sea of corn.
I
wonder if Jesus would walk upon the corn.
Would
He take my hand
so
I wouldn’t drown
in
this field of corn?
So
that sailors could
row
through the corn, take my hand
and
pluck me from corn?
As
I come to another
in
the infinite rows of corn,
I
remember this guy
two
towns over
who
died in a field of corn.
His
lover left him, so he took
his
.38 and shredded his head
like
cheese in a grinder of corn—
in
an unhappy, unholy high-fructose suicide.
The
corn farmer who found him
in
his field of corn, said
the blood spotted
green
like Christmas, a
Christmas
where Jesus was
killed
and His blood was
wasted on corn
in a field of corn
in the middle of sinners and corn.
But
death is not corn.
or, rather,
death is
corn.
I
remember, in this corn, all the sermons
I
heard about corn:
A corn of corn
must fall into the earth
and die. Or it
will be alone. But if it die?
It brings forth a
field of corn.
And
it’s true.
The
seeds of corn are cast
to
the moist, Nebraska field and die,
only
to sprout more corn:
A high-fructose
resurrection of corn.
And
as corn is born again—
(it
takes about three days,
says
a respectable corn farmer)
it
sprouts to the sun
and
shows itself first
to
maidens who herald
the
rebirth of corn.
I
kneel before the corn.
The
corn has exposed roots,
making
the tassels golden,
the
silk golden,
the
kernel golden,
the
cob golden from a golden
sun
that feeds it
and
allows my nephew to use it
as
gold, a stock-market of corn
in
his world where the lights
to
sandcastles are corn.
I
step in between two rows of corn,
and
see some volunteer corn.
This
corn is shorter than the rest,
practically
a weed of corn
from
a seed of corn wasted,
forgotten,
except for the
farmer
with an eye for corn.
I
smell the corn.
I
don’t think its sweet corn
or
Indian corn, but field corn.
Maybe
it’s a by-god
emmy-corn
hybrid.
I
think of cornbread—Golden
like
corn, we put it in our mouths
and
chew, the corn
comes
apart and is swallowed
where
it finds its way past
our
cornholes and is expelled:
Used up corn.
I
feel the corn.
Stalks
like sugar leaves
rough
and cutting,
tassels
dripping pollen,
silk
as soft and as blond
as
my cousin’s friend’s hair
I
brushed once, brushing out
detritus
from a day
in
the corn bin, pushing out corn.
I
remember her hair smelled
as
sweet as this corn,
and
we held hands and ran,
laughing
in memories of corn.
I
taste the corn. Not sweet
like
sweet corn, but corn, nonetheless.
A
niblet of corn gets caught in my teeth—
A
wonderful, painful
cavity
of corn.
Hell,
I even used to smoke corn.
My
friend and I used to steal
into
the corn and rip
silk
from the corn, and roll it
up
into joints of corn.
I’m
lost in my thoughts
in
a field of corn.
The
moon is yellow,
the
yellow of corn,
a
single kernel of corn
like
a lonely tooth stuck
in
an endless cob of corn.
And
yes, the stars, tonight, are corn.
I
walk back through the field of corn,
back
to my corn-fueled car
(ethanol,
my friends)
and
can hear the voice of corn
rustling
me to sleep,
to
stay in this crater of corn.
I
walk from the heart of the corn
to
the edge of corn
where
the corn’s world
whispers
good-bye
in
the soft voice of corn.
I
get in my car, and know
after
the fair, maybe a frost,
I’ll
drive down this road
into
the gaping, brown-toothed maw
of
a graveyard of corn.
The
End of Corn
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