I hear America, and it's mostly exploding,
revving its Japanese crotch-rockets into glorious buzzing,
cranking its Camaros, rolling coal. I hear America jack-hammering
concrete into the dust of an imagined future,
on the never-completed overpass eliding the past
it blows in golden boughs right up its callow ass. I hear
America cawing, drawn onto the tacky-black asphalt
in search of lost fries, dropped globs of Starbux smoothie. I
hear America thumping its bass and tinning its treble
into patriotic ghetto tinnitus! I hear that you're under
the weather and bid you get well soon, as the thunderrattles
the windows of the fallingdown exurban cul-de-sac tract
house, where I hear the jays fighting the squirrels over
a randomdropped shock of corn. I hear America cheering
a dying star as he runs the gridiron, chasing his allusive
millions—I hear the decibel-crushing sports bar
vibrate with the decimation of his black-cleated soul. I hear every day
who the president hates, who the preacher's spit-soaked mic
casts into the hellfire; I hear America's eternal damn-nation. I
her commuters' cars hiss on the highway, kiss rubber
to the concrete, lay down yet another layer of Chinese-treaded
hope.
You! The goose-stepping teen!
You! The Boomer tapping anger
into his Samsung Galaxy!
You! The treacle-headed widow
pressing the video slot machine
into devil-headed poverty! Hear, too
the ASMR tear-pat of dawn.
–EW Wilder
EastWesterly Review 