Runaway Boomerang

     This sestina was one for workshopping in Dr. Mackie's Poetry Writing course, so I'll rearrange stuff and try to tell the story clearer. A classmate during Dr. Dial-Driver's Lit Traditions class mentioned that her mom was a doctor's daughter and her dad was a welder's son; and I loved that phrase, so I scrawled it down, and then ran from there. The narrator, Starr, she came from nowhere and totally took this over. (It's kind of frustrating when that happens, but also really exciting....you have no idea where you're going, or how you got there. Sort of like talking with Jon or Amanda, or how our conversations with Jed or Sam went.)
     This poem takes place in the mid-to-late nineties, and that threw some people off during the critiquing, since the one about the square dance was purposely timeless.

She was the doctor’s daughter,

he was a welder’s son.

What else is there you can say?

 They fell in love, there was a huge scandal;

 that was all they wanted, and they were everything…

 Happens in most places in small towns, just seems distinctly America.

 Fast-forward to my generation’s America;

 I’m the Bon Jovi runaway daughter

 who embodies everything

 that no self-respecting preacher’s son

 can look at without feeling scandal.

 I feel shame, I say,

at some of the things my parents say;

it’s stupid, but this PC fucked-up America

makes giving any opinion at all a scandal.

Much less the tatted slut daughter

whose past is brought up like the rising of the sun;

my misdeeds are seen as everything.

But Mom and Dad did everything

from the stories I’ve heard ‘em say,

too… His dad threw his son

out of the house, even. It was the age of rebellion in America

where if you weren’t a dove daughter,

now, that would cause a scandal…

Now there’s been that Monica scandal,

I swear, lost my faith in politically everything…

My parents see their daughter

Starr’s life I’ve patched together and say

that maybe there’s hope for America

after all. I strap my six-string Gibson

to my dirt bike and ride into the sunset

trying to make sense of my parents’ town’s scandal.

I just don’t understand America,

or how twisted everything

can be its reported people say.

Guess I am my parents’ daughter...

Now my son is my everything;

I can’t care less what those scandals say.

I may damn America, but I’m still its daughter.