I was a boy in the Midwest one time, immersed in the flat and the corn.
The sun came up summer like slow atom bombs, in winter like something to mourn.
The roads were all ditched with a cattail morass; the telephone poles sliced the breeze.
My mother canned peaches she bought off a truck, and served them with cold cottage cheese.
The bourgeois patina was thick as the dust that coated the dry gravel roads
We drove down to silos and tractors and homes with hand-painted little stone toads.
The grain elevators stood sentinel watch near tracks overgrown with milkweed,
And casseroles roamed -- macaroni and soup -- sprinkled with black poppyseed.
Watering lawns was an artisan craft, practiced by dads in shirt sleeves.
Gutters were misunderstood, so cold nights great icicles formed on the eaves.
I thought when I grew up I’d find a new place where people were not such dull dorks --
But all I discovered is that other folks never eat stew with their forks.
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