America by Tim Suermondt

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  AMERICA

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In my dream I tell Sartre I didn’t like

the way he treated Camus.

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He removes his glasses and in an almost

whisper says “I’m sorry.”

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“That’s good enough for me,” I say

and we walk down St. Germain-des-Pres

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like old comrades on a beautiful day.

He puffs on his pipe and says “I love

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Americans,” a half smile sincerely made.

I don’t say a word but I remember

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when the entire world would have agreed,

when the entire world would have celebrated.

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Tim Suermondt is the author of four full-length collections of poems, the latest one THE WORLD DOESN’T KNOW YOU. His fifth collection JOSEPHINE BAKER SWIMMING POOL will be coming out from MadHat Press in January 2019. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, North of Oxford, Bellevue Literary Review and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.

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