I suppose we might thank Hollywood for this: you
can sit on the bench at the corner of Consolidated
and Corn-Town Road and watch a child with
iron-pierced lips

flag down a Harley and wrap tattooed arms
around a born-to-be-wild wife-beater, then
ride off into what used to be called a
sunset—until the evenings gave way

to television and Budweiser, cheap meth and a
little patch of pot, home sweet home. Well, that’s
how the show goes in Ohio. The rock-and-roll
Baptists out by Wal-Mart

preach pretty hard against such plagues, but God
knows they’re the stock of the same wicked soup,
when factories go, when farms go, and daylight
can’t hang on any longer.