In midwestern cities, I drink piña coladas in plastic cups on the eastern end of an isthmus. I join a sample size of America on every Greyhound bus going toward Chicago. I find the homeless man from Edgewater on a bench in Madison and he fits right in. I watch my face grow fat with pigs’ blood and pigs’ guts. I watch bicycles get stolen, wallets returned. I drink turtle and Turkish lattes in coffee houses that burst with theoretical mathematics. I watch physics grads quarrel like lawmakers over slow drip and wish I’d made different choices. In midwestern cities, I visit aquariums that host Brazilian tree frogs and rare eels that have no business being this far from home. I fall prey to vendors who say I won’t find this beer this cheese this scarf anywhere else. I meet white women who echo their politicians in the dark and present me with spontaneous pies, lemon meringues in the daytime. I bite. In the midwest, I pack myself into bookstores that are deep, hidden like caves. Emerge with poems on buttoned pockets and human excrement. I lose my way in the suburbs and ride any bus because they all converge to downtown’s sweet bustle. I meet boys who lie about the cities they’re from. In the midwest, I meet boys and silhouettes of boys dancing on the lake on the hottest night of summer. In the midwest, I learn to love my hair because I find no lace fronts in Iowa City. I learn that there are roads in this city that you only know if you’ve ever hated this city. I fall in love with quaint shops and hope they don’t die though I know they always will. I visit the childhood homes of dead presidents and capture the moment. I walk for hours in the protest, only remember the faces of an elderly white couple bearing up a tapestry of Black Jesus. I sit on the state’s largest walnut rocking chair because it is all I can do. I eat noodles upon noodles at the noodle house because I am not yet brave enough to tell my love that I can no longer stand him. In the midwest, I finally learn what percocet is. I finally learn that there is no tornado. That there is no accent. There is only a twang or there isn’t. There is only struggle or there isn’t. I finally see that the microwave’s light which projects its grid against the kitchen wall isn’t beautiful because I’m miserable but because I’ve prevailed. North of the center of the states, I’ve prevailed. Despite highways and hair and charm, I’ve splayed myself flat—rugged, wide, and ridiculous as tenderloin—and prevailed.
Meghan Malachi is a poet and writer from The Bronx, New York. She is an Associate Editor at RHINO and the Co-Creative Director of Indigo Sessions. She is the first-place winner of the Spoon River Poetry Review 2022 Editor's Prize Contest and runner-up of the 2024 Princemere Poetry Prize. Her poetry collection, No Lace Fronts in Iowa City, was selected by Allison Joseph as runner-up of Madville Publishing’s 2024 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize. Her first chapbook, The Autodidact, was published by Ethel Zine & Micro Press. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.