Erin Keane

Faux Better Blues

It’s the inauthentic historical films
I love, heroines with shiny grills
of straight teeth, all epic veneers
and not a hair out of place, even
high on the Scottish Highlands
or slung over bareback native
war ponies—you never see them
so much as shit outside. Face it,
we’re delicate as the admiral’s
spirited daughter—save dysentery
for PBS, for creative anachronism
society picnics. Give me plastic
replicas, so unbreakable, let me
safety-scissor Barbie’s hair butch
instead of my own, let me lip-read
dubbed Kung Fu movies on mute,
I only speak English but what can
it matter? Give us today our daily
fortune, written by failing Asian
Studies majors, feed us our soy
cheese, our fungal protein patties.
Karaoke me a hit, please: cover one
great song, stand up and show me,
show that air guitar who’s boss.

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Erin Keane is the author of The Gravity Soundtrack, a collection of poems. She lives, works and writes in Louisville, Kentucky, where she teaches pop music in American literature at Bellarmine University and directs the InKY Reading Series.