- I want to be doused in cheese and fried.

I want to wander the aisles, my heart's supermarket stocked high as cholesterol.

Ode to the Midwest is by Kevin Young.

It's basically talking about the Midwest and kind of like poking fun at like little Midwestern things like scraping your driveway clean and wanting to do things on your own.

And cheese.

There's a shift towards the end where the author kind of talks about how kind of lonely the Midwest is for the author themselves.

I picked that one because while like the poem the Midwest is like great and like all the fun, silly little things that make it niche, there is just still that little bit of like isolation for when the Midwest isn't really built for people like you.

Ode to the Midwest by Kevin Young.

The country I come from is called the Midwest, Bob Dylan.

I want to be doused in cheese and fried.

I want to wander the aisles, my heart's supermarket stocked high as cholesterol.

I wanna die wearing a sweatsuit.

I want to live forever in a Christmas sweater, a teddy bear nursing off the front.

I want to write a check in the express lane.

I want to scrape my driveway clean, early, myself before anyone's awake.

That'll put 'em to shame.

I want to see what the sun sees before it tells the snow to go.

I wanna be the only black person I know.

I want to throw out my back and not complain about it.

I want to drive two blocks, why walk?

I want love and stuff.

I want to cut my sutures myself.

I want to jog down to the river and make it my bed.

I want to walk its muddy banks and make me a withdrawal.

I tried jumping in, found it frozen.

I'll go home, I guess to my rooms where the moon changes and shines like television.

- [Narrator] Funded by the North Dakota Council on the Arts and by the members of Prairie Public.