semantikon feature literature
Oct. 2003
Aralee Strange
works

AUDIO
 
biography

Strange is a poet/playwright whose body of work includes Etta Stone: A Film for Radio (1990) which she wrote, produced and edited and was aired nationally on NPR stations including WGBH's Arts & Ideas series. Other work includes dr. pain on main, a play commissioned/produced by Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park in 1991 and commissioned/produced again by the 2005 Cincinnati Fringe Festival; The Chronicles of Plague (1992), commissioned/produced by Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati; and An Evening at the Sad Café (1995). Strange also wrote, directed and edited This Train a feature film she worked on from 1996-2001. Awards and fellowships include the MacDowell Colony, the Kentucky Foundation for Women, the Cincinnati Fine Arts Fund and the Ohio Arts Council.
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aralee starnge, this train, cut up poems, poet, playwright, radio producer, performance artist, cincinnati ohio, kentucky, alabama, audio 
Veteran’s Day Parade (reprise)

Ominous and silent the big military trucks across town
passing people mostly old men mostly white waving
their little flags feebly

One carries a sign

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxto HELL with Hiroshima
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxto HELL with Nagasaki
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxremember PEARL HARBOR

bitch rose from the South Seas
breathed the first whiff of mysterious east into the conflict
and rotting feet
thought we were ready for wet
thought we were ready for ambush and run
we thought wrong but what the fuck

we’re still the greatest goddamned nation on earth

and desert’s dry sun always shining
(but not like California but not like Miami Beach)
but what the fuck

we tap the deepest blackest crude
we drive the biggest mother trucks
we laid the longest thickest pipeline in the universe
we run an equal opportunity military
we put a g.i. jill in every cab
we dig her desert rock & do wop de bopping off to war boots babe
we dig her mirrored shades

it’s the Real Thing america’s made of
sex and war and rock and rich all rolled into one big gun and
rubber be guzzling gasoline until the shifting sands bury the
bones of the boy at the wheel

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxmama mama
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxdesert is hot
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxand your child’s a pawn
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxin an old man’s game

who Remember Why We Fought
for their big american buicks for their endless freeways
all the same mall after mall after mall of American Made

flatten! the curve and roll of the land
build! another road another bridge another dam
sing! omnipotent petroleum daddy
and lay your lead foot down
daddy going drive and sell
daddy going bring home some bacon
daddy going grease america’s wheels rolling on tires
so big they’ll burn spewing black deadly for months
daddy going get tough going save us
if daddy have to kill us

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxmama mama
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxhell’s no hotter
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxhow come my blood’s
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxspilt in the sand

when they rise like the snarling dogs of Saqqara
to cut us down
to bring us down
to call down the Day of Restoration
and no Allah to shield us
no pity in the needle’s eye
no reason good enough

Strange
January 1991
“Desert Storm”