NVN Monday: MIDWESTERN AMERICAN DREAM

by Svetlana Litvinchuk

AI-generated graphic by Shutterstock for The New Verse News.

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My American husband wants a quiet life. He’s ready for it 
to be predictable again, as it unfolds across the flat, 
easy soil in the American Heartland. He says he knows 
what to expect from people there.
 
He’s nostalgic for the kindness of strangers
holding doors open for one another and for all 
the seasons to parade in and out in an orderly fashion. 
He wants rectangular plots of easy to tame lawn 
and fresh cut barbecue Sundays where the wildest 
thing is grass prairie housing clean water in gleaming
towers.
 
He wants starchy cuisine swimming in dairy, lactose 
intolerance be damned. He craves a place so bland 
that they ship newscasters there for vocal training 
to drop any accents that might offend. 
 
We’ve entered the low-drama era of our lives.
The low-stakes, low-excitement Zen that urbanites 
don’t know they’re missing.
 
He wants toothless fish that surrender to the hook 
from stocked lakes in subdivisions so that he can 
appear capable of anything, heroic in the eyes
of our daughter.
 
Soon she’ll take her first steps. So, it is time to decide
on our preschool of choice, their waiting list coveting 
our checking account. We’ll roll around the cul-de-sacs 
in the comfort of our Sienna minivan, a synecdoche 
of a humble family life.
 
We’ll choose our couple-friends, who will also be 
parents and he’ll swig beer with someone named Chris 
by the grill while I’ll have low-voiced table chats 
with someone named Emily as we keep watch out 
the sliding glass door as our children play in the yard 
and there will be 
 
no war planes flying overhead and we will be 
so safe that we’ll have the luxury of taking for granted 
just how safe we are.

*

Photo from US European Command video of Russian warplane over the Black Sea

*

Svetlana Litvinchuk is a poet and permaculture farmer who holds degrees from University of New Mexico. She is the author of a debut poetry chapbook Only a Season (Bottlecap Features, 2024). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Apple Valley Review, Sky Island Journal, Plant-Human Quarterly, ONE ART, Apocalypse Confidential, Union Spring Review, Longhouse Press, and elsewhere. Originally from Kyiv, Ukraine, she now lives with her husband and daughter on their organic farm in the Arkansas Ozarks where she derives satisfaction from watching cucumber plants climb their trellises skyward. She is a reviews editor with ONLY POEMS.