American Gothic

    by Meg Porter 


The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — 
it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The 
simulacrum is true. -Ecclesiastes, from Baudrillard's 
The Precession of the Simulacra.

It used to be the sky
and vast dominion meant
this side next, fill it up or erase it.
All the water in the far off sea 
was clean and freshening the edges.
Once upon a time mom and dad
could fill a car for the weekend
with gum and wrappers
as children fell asleep in the corners,
jarred and blinking in the glow
of good intentions.
There was nowhere to run, no real need to
and enough sunlight to fill the time.
Nothing needed to be done about
the same old secrets: engine on, engine off.
Easy does it and upsy daisy in the rigamarole,
we kept the getty-up and go 
in the thingamajig under the hood.
Time doesn't pass in these jukeboxes anymore,
there's more fidget in a pesky market
than on the streets where everyone used to ride
look no hands and by the seat of their pants
all torn and socks full of thorns.
The weeds mattered more than the sanctions
when girls got up slow and boys grew up thin.
Way back when a window was mostly pegs and putty
instead of glide and shine, no one minded a crack.
No one bothered to count the missing bits
of paint or the patches on a pair,
it was expected. Life needed to end somewhere.
We could stitch the universe with a thread,
organize the world with a rake and we sure did.