poem

 City Limits

Welcome to Anywhere, USA. Population almost infinite. We’re an All-American town where everyone is welcome as long as you abide by a list of ordinances written down, lost, forgotten, and then forged back into existence long ago. On the other side of this line lies a world of indistinct possibility for any wanderer willing to try. If you have been kidnapped and brought here against your will, please be patient, someone will be with you soon. Enjoy the complimentary pistachios and pineapple juices while you wait. We are not responsible for property misplaced or forcibly taken. Nor do we have the resources to prevent an unholy concentration of wealth in the hands of a nihilistic upper crust. Our rivers are numbered but not named. We don’t pay attention to mountains. Every bridge here is a different color. We don’t preserve old barns for the local historical society to turn into boring museums gathering dust. We just let everything fall down (when it must).  Nevertheless, every day is a ribbon cutting ceremony celebrating the opening of another portal to the other side of consciousness. Anyone is free to use them but it’s a one way trip. No one comes back. At least as far as you know. The first thing you ought to do is pay a visit to our lovely visitor’s center where they slash you with a scythe and, when the wound heals, you get a lifetime pass to the community pool. Only the diving board is off limits. Down this road is where you find expensive, brightly lit mansions displaying giant portraits of its inhabitants that you can see from the road while driving slowly by at night. Down the other way is a dead end, but only after several thousand miles. The road I’m currently on can only be accessed by foot. Seven lanes of pedestrians in both directions. Most of us here are just 9-5 working stiffs and the commute is all part of the suffering. We’re just like you. Only a little bit different. Rush hour is terrible in most ways except for one— you meet some interesting people just standing there for an hour in lane 6 on the Old Cinderblock Trail. We all work at the Respite Home for the Hideously Deformed. My current charge has a scar on his face shaped like a memory you only half forget but still feel. All day long he rubs his fingers along its keloided edges while staring out the window. He never talks. I’m not allowed to know his name. At lunch hour the employees all gather behind the one way glass to watch the residents chew. The human digestive tract is essentially just a long absorptive tube with openings at the beginning and end. Pretty basic physiology. Didn’t take a genius to come up with that. Nematodes, the nickname of our high school team, had it down at least 600 million years before us. Outside of work, we’re like any other municipality; grocery stores and gas stations. More cobblers than you’d expect, fewer steak houses. But all in all a pretty standard American layout. I pretty much get along with everyone here. But don’t ask me what it was like before I arrived. You’re not allowed to talk about it. Whatever happens here is immediately forgotten. Don’t take my word for it— it’s in the disclaimer written in tiny print at the bottom of the contract nobody ever signs but will. Once you cross our town’s threshold nothing will ever seem the same. Every smell will have a specific sound. Your orgasms will completely interiorize, become spasms of mental ecstasy without any outwardly physical manifestations. Love is an acceptable form of currency (plus the 3% surcharge). The children all live in a giant cage like the aviary at the zoo, the \ seniors occupying the top branches of the tree with the 1st graders down below feeding on their droppings. This is a family town. Old stock. Traditional in every sense. We would never use a euphemism when we mean to take the Lord’s name in vain. We believe in all the punishments— corporal, capital and ethereal. Eternal damnation is a joke. Like telling your best friend you fucked his mother. Every September 4th we all gather round the old gazebo on the grassy commons and listen to a series of unsettling speeches delivered by community elders dressed in white tunics. This is our High Mass. They use the old language none of us were ever taught.  But we’re not here for understanding. We bow our heads and receive our penances in the form of cigarette burns on the back of our necks. Then silence spreads across the lawn like an afternoon eclipse. We close our eyes and contemplate the martyrdom of our patron saint, Adam of Eden—fallen angel, exiled from paradise, someday to return again. There never was a snake.

6/27/26