Pastoral for Late Stage Capitalism
A gas station with a dead neon sign.
I drove all this way so that I could write
about grass. Farmhouse after
farm house. Smoke clouds puff
from a nuclear plant. Corn stalk
after cornstalk. Miles and milesoffield,
until a strip mall rises against the horizon.
I was supposed to find bluestem grass,
purple corn flowers. Out in Western
North Dakota there’s a prairie restoration
project. I remember the schoolbus, leaving treads
in the grass like a bride staining
her weddingsheets. I remember the seeds,
dirtlodged beneath fingernails,
black as the ash I smeared on foreheads
as an altarserver. In ten years, my teacher said,
thousands of miles of prairie will be restored.
I never should have trusted it. The state made other
plans: a coldplaner teethed through our seed lings,
asphalting a new highway. What is a promise
but a window for betrayal? I check and recheck
the address on my phone, stop
at a onestreettown for gas and a burger,
walk toward the glow of stadiumlights, lay
down when I reach the high school
football field. The turf smells of the tires
they shredded to make dirt. It’s grass—
perfect, artificial green.
*
Helmholtz Resonance
Crumbs — all that’s left of my coffee cake. Plates
clatter as they’re loaded in the dishwasher. Ashtrays
on the bar. When Hopper painted Nighthawks
he didn’t intend to evoke loneliness —a waiter,
two men in suits, a woman considering the brine
of a martini olive. Across the street, a cash register
that never trills. I pinch the coffee cake crumbs
between my first and forefinger (I need to fixate,
you understand). My sister purses her lips over an empty
bottle and, when her breath catches in the cavity, we mistake
its vibrations for music. I’m noticing sounds these days.
The way her voice catches like a run in Sunday
pantyhose. He threw the bottle, but not
at me. Sara Beth dealt with worse and S.—
well you remember. The vinyl booth squeals as she peels
her thighs from the cushion and I think about
what one woman passes to the next: slim feet,
hair that curls, snail shells at the nape, a penchant
for a man with a scrying smile. My sister digs in her
purse for coins to put in the jukebox,
plays a song where a cowboy lets go of love.
*
Dutiful Wife
A man and a woman meet,
fall in love, get married. On their wedding
night he combs
rice from her hair with fingers that become teeth. Possession
is a poor marksman. The man and the woman have
a daughter, a son. They lose
a daughter. The woman
spends her days sitting by the window,
watching trucks misfire. The man tries
to break ships
carefully sealed in bottles. Both yell and sometimes,
at
night,
their son hears gunshots, but when he sneaks out from his room neither parent
is holding a weapon. Their son is an elm growing
through an abandoned Cadillac.
Their son is the busted fence post that loosed the stallions.
He goes to the field, everyday, with his father until one day the man has a stroke, collapses.
Boy takes father in arms, screams
for help. Now, when the man talks
there are no words. Only
butterflies.
*
The wife sits at a casino bar, waiting for a man
who is not her husband. She wants
someone to bend her body, to brush
his teeth on her throat without threat. Everyday she bathes
her hospital-bound husband,
bucket growing more overcast
with each washcloth dip. Her husband speaks
simple, baby words: more, here.
Monosyllables keep the wife
returning like a mouse running a maze for sugar pellets
He was in while you slept, the wife lies.
The man from the bar carefully, as if picking a peach
from a county highway cart, fondles the wife’s breasts.
He doesn’t want to contuse her flesh.
Later, he tells her of the bruises his hands
left on his best friend’s neck. A bar fight. Commonplace
violence. Impossible to slap or shake his buddy awake.
He asks the wife if he can spit in her mouth,
then slap her. She surprises
herself: yes.
*
The slot machine tells the wife to spin.
Everyday the same crowd
of choices: work, school, hospital, drugstore.
In the back of the car, sits grief, kicking
the wife’s seat. The slot machine tells her to spin.
When she goes to work/school/hospital/drugstore,
she always runs into a neighbor, a hand on her arm. How’s he doing?
Impossible to answer with generic pleasantry, though the doctor has written her a prescription.
No one asks the wife how she’s doing.
She pulls the lever until the screen fills with fake coins. Her depression
should wear a raincoat.
She pulls the lever until she forgets daughter, husband.
She never forgets her son. She pulls the lever
until someone calls her a winner.
Click here to subscribe today and leave your comment, or log in if you’re already a paid subscriber.