"Ode to American English" by Barbara Hamby

Barbara Hamby is an American author, poet, fiction writer, editor, and critic. She was born in New Orleans, Louisiana but was raised in Hawaii. She was born in 1952. Her writing style blends pop culture references in formally strict lyrically extravagant poems.

I was missing English one day, American, really,
    with its pill-popping Hungarian goulash of everything
from Anglo-Saxon to Zulu, because British English
    is not the same, if the paperback dictionary
I bought at Brentano's on the Avenue de l'Opera
    is any indication, too cultured by half. Oh, the English
know their dahlias, but what about doowop, donuts,
    Dick Tracy, Tracy Dick? With their elegant Oxfordian
accents, how could they understand my yearning for the hotrod,
    hotdog, hot flash vocabulary of the U.S. of A.,
the fragmented fandango of Dagwood's everyday flattening
    of Mr. Beasley on the sidewalk, fetuses floating
on billboards, drive-by monster hip-hop stereos shaking
    the windows of my dining room like a 7.5 earthquake,
Ebonics, Spanglish, "you know" used as comma and period,
    the inability of 90% of the population to get the past perfect:
I have went, I have saw, I have tooken Jesus into my heart,
    the battle cry of the Bible Belt, but no one uses
the King James anymore, only plain-speak versions,
    in which Jesus, raising Lazarus from the dead, says,
"Dude, wake up," and the L-man bolts up like a B-movie
    mummy. "Whoa, I was toasted." Yes, ma'am,
I miss the mongrel plenitude of American English, its fall-guy
    rat-terrier, dog-pound neologisms, the bomb of it all,
the rushing River Jordan backwoods mutability of it, the low-rider,
    with its sly dog, malasada-scarf beach blanket lingo
to the ubiquitous Valley Girls like-like stuttering,
    shopaholic rant. I miss its quotidian beauty, its querulous
back-biting righteous indignation, its preening rotgut
    flag-waving cowardice. Suffering Succotash, sputters
Sylvester the Cat; sine die, say the pork-bellied legislators
    of the swamps and plains. I miss all those guys, their Tweety-bird
resilience, their Doris Day optimism, the candid unguent
    of utter happiness on every channel, the midnight televangelist
euphoric stew, the junk mail, voice mail vernacular.
    On every boulevard and rue I miss the Tarzan cry of Johnny
Weismueller, Johnny Cash, Johnny B. Goode,
    and all the smart-talking, gum-snapping hard-girl dialogue,
finger-popping x-rated street talk, sports babble,
    Cheetoes, Cheerios, chili dog diatribes. Yeah, I miss them all,
sitting here on my sidewalk throne sipping champagne
    verses lined up like hearses, metaphors juking, nouns zipping
in my head like Corvettes on Dexedrine, French verbs
    slitting my throat, yearning for James Dean to jump my curb.

This poem presents distinct examples that all pertain to American English and how it has become completely its own. It is not anything like the British roots that it came from, and in this poem, the speaker is nostalgic of all that American English is to them, Americans might not be able to identify with all of her examples, but we can recognize them and know that they are part of our heritage.
The ironic thing about this poem is that we are told that the "paperback dictionary" on British English is purchased in a bookstore called Brentano's, which is the "American bookstore in Paris." Therefore, it's even more ironic that the bookstore is American and selling British English dictionaries. Since the poem is all about language, it's interesting that there is so much irony about the location of the dictionary and its contents.
Then again, the poem is discussing language, and American English is influenced by multiple languages, so it is possible that the author is stressing this point by having an American bookstore sell British dictionaries in Paris.
There are multiple categories of examples, ranging from the many different languages brought from immigrants to food unique to us. No matter how unique all of these examples are to us, they were influenced by some other place in the world and brought here to be part of something big and influential in itself. British English and French are proper languages, but American English is sloppy and, to most everyone in the world, the most difficult to learn. The examples in this poem reflect the haphazard jargon that is common language to Americans across the country, It's a language easy and warming to us Americans, and it's worth missing if you find yourself across the world.