civic body

If I could remember to remember
to be half-interesting, set out the right
assortment of facts about myself 
at parties, I might
tell people that I grew up
within fifty miles of a nuclear power plant,
or that I have suffered at least one
major pneumothorax.

My home:

A bit of corn caught in the teeth of the world,
just big enough
for a line of poetry, a scrap of prose,
the cutting of an olive ribbon where
once every ten years,
the blebs of the wetlands pop

and fill the cavity of land,

where the flood-bringers are half-forgotten,
and even the names of those old, white men
supposed to have brought this place to its bringing
are faded to concrete gray, gasoline

spilling,

pooling on a garage floor

and the city rewrites itself in bronze, 
heavy books
opened to just the right page,

every word trodden
a plea for recognition, for admiration,

and the Mormons who never crossed the creek
gather underneath
the cut of white steeple against blue,
heaven scarring heaven
where crowds of congregants clump together
to half-heartedly hum
that no one loves God here anymore,

and crowds thrum in brick arteries
standing underneath a stained-glass skywalk to pray—

Our Mother, who art in nature
hallowed be thy name,
thy kingdom come, thy will be done
among man
as it is in heaven—

and the crippled cilia of the trees
writhe across the landscape
where the scalpel of the house harvest
has shorn them jagged,

and the ghost of a child 
shadow-walks between them,
all spine and ribs
no water, no fat, no land;

and beneath it all, 
under the prairie sod,
a knife in a boy’s heart,
sleeping.