A Small Town

It takes its name
from all the other caches
of meaningless names.
There will be cows and grass,
small town pulpits and a Sunday Mass,
small town dirt roads ending in doors
that lock in from the inside all memories.
There will be small town festivals
with colorful banners, parades
of decorated deities, clichéd
metronomic speeches of mayors
and cigar-smelling governors
and grinning mouse-faced vice mayors.
There will be gnarled and angry trees
along the side of the streets,
small town bums playing billiards
in fluorescent-lit rooms,
small town karaoke bars
barking in between
the silences of howling dogs,
and small town yards
with all the flowers
of the universe.
There will be ducks and chickens traipsing
their scrawls, languages, riddles upon dirt
and clothes and sheets flapping under the sun.
There will be hills and mountains seen from afar,
all kinds of fences for all kinds of trespassing feet,
rice and corn fields–their pained beauty like deliverance,
faucets that leak and eyes that seek
what lies beyond this small town wasteland.
There will be horses, sometimes white, sometimes not
that can not take anyone far enough
from small town incest and pedophiles and illegal loggers:
a regular small town merchandise.
There will be the ones who will quit,
the ones who will die,
the ones who will get pregnant in their teens,
the ones who will go to college,
the ones who will be killed,
and the ones who are not supposed to die.
There will be small town people
who will take care of their families,
send their kids to school, not beat the dogs
with their tainted feet or pass out drunk
in the middle of the street, and sometimes
tweak the ancient television antenna,
hoping to catch the face of God
behind the static.