Today’s Poem

On Visiting the Home of Mark Twain in Hannibal, Missouri

Over two hours in a borrowed car

before we park and navigate

through the small river town stone

streets. This is not Whitman’s

song of myself, learned astronomer,

or pontification on a Brooklyn bridge,

this is the story of the poor. The gap-

tooth owners and the shoeless folks

in cut-off jeans. They live

in close proximity to their animals.

This was the land of straw hats,

moonshine, and slave owning.

Twain didn’t have it easy, transcendental

high roads were washed out.

That’s why he sent Huckleberry

down the river of machinations,

with a white boys memory

of what it’d be like to runaway

on a raft with a man like Jim.

-Jason Braun