The American Gothic

There is a myth that America Is full of tender, hardworking people but I have been to the 6th & Tacoma Avenue, and I can tell you this town is laced with blue. I went to the gas station, where a man stood outside asking For change and when I offered him food & water he said "No." When I came back out, he was nodded off, lips blue as the pills in his pocket. I drove through rural Mississippi and I saw real poverty. American poverty. People who cannot read books or write their names and live in trailers or mobile homes set atop foundations of cinderblocks as if that is going to save them when a tornado rips through. And it feels like everyone has got them Delta Blues. We have finally created a plague for our own extinction. This is the new American Gothic; the heartland with blue faces, blue bellies and blue hands.