For America, Chicken Sandwiches, and My Brother

Mom snores on the flight, and we share a pair
of earphones from Stuttgart to Lansing, listening

to the Armageddon soundtrack because it is, in fact, 1999, 
The End Times, or the end of something, Aerosmith helps

us to recognize it as such. We are anxious to exit the plane, 
to hug our dad, get our beagle out of the cargo, and move

into the world finally, the America of Marge Simpson, George 
Costanza, Monica Geller, of Cliff and Clair Huxtable,

Jay Leno, where are they? That special American comedy 
of our lives? For us, the American Dream consists

of laugh tracks and living rooms. And Lansing, Michigan, 
is, in fact, funny: short buildings, Quality Dairies, car

dealerships with their lights disturbing the night’s peace, 
the electrical wires on telephone poles tangled, streets

under construction, adult bookstores, and not Germany, 
not the military base, and we are glad of it for now.

In the Days Inn, our temporary home, we find a television. You 
and I stay up all night switching channels to watch

only commercials. On the base, the breaks between television 
shows gave us only antismoking notices, short

educational clips of American History, NCO of the Month 
announcements, information on national parks, images

of Old Faithful shooting out of the ground like a fire
hydrant in the heat of summer. But what about commercials?

What about the All-American feeling of being inundated? 
Of being pursued? Our parents sleep and we spend our first

night in America mesmerized by a Burger King chicken 
sandwich bending on the screen to “I believe in miracles,”

flashing its yellow-red light onto our parents’ blank faces. 
In that moment, a chicken sandwich is the America we’ve

always longed for. Because it is, indeed, The End Times,
but Bruce Willis is probably partying somewhere with Demi

Moore, couldn’t save us. Within a year, Bruce and Demi will 
call it quits, and my family will see a therapist named Juan

who will say that there is not only a generational difference 
between us and our parents, but also a cultural difference.

And by then, you and I will not know what the hell 
happened, how we got from here to there, but each night

we will sit in front of the television as the chicken sandwich 
dances. It’ll be a thing we crave and dread at once, as it twirls

and asks us: Where ya from, where ya from, ya sexy thing?

Read more from Issue 16.1.