Listen:
Someone forgot to lock the door to this life
We’ll make our escape
Windows rolled down, bare legs lolling out
As white lines blur by
Heat shimmers concrete into sky
Celebrants of our freedom
Wear not party hats
But bed sheets donned at Wal-Mart
Crafted by fine Indochinese artisans
Shackled to sewing machines
We’ll cut eye holes and haunt the aisles
Wailing like the vengeful ghosts of trampled local merchants
We martyred for their dignity
Guiding carts, in need of sedate
Serial paperbacks and some empathy from the two of us
There are many elderly Republicans
They don’t appreciate an afternoon of spectacle
(Wrong latitude)
Repair with me to housewares for a broom:
A cattle prod
We’ll chase them
Back to their RVs, moored at the asphalt
Suckling the everyday low prices in some
Sort of disagreeable symbiosis
Borrowing hauteur from their bolo ties
Lone star license plates, all et ceterae
They scowl from behind the tinted windows
At us: at everything
That’s wrong with America
Their miniature dogs will yip and be called darling
Animals born forty years late
With such small lungs, the little angels
Could’ve joined those patriot menageries
Rocketed to their superatmospheric deaths
For rivaling space programs
There’s glory like that, still
Somewhere
An echo that never faded
We’ll hunt it down.
