Our Rustbelt Hometown Has Been Shrinky-Dinked
by Clancy Tripp
OUR RUSTBELT HOMETOWN HAS BEEN SHRINKY-DINKED
into talking points again & my heartland pride is acid-washed and cuffed
and worth more worn ironically & I’ve reverse yellow-brick-roaded from
the big city to this speedlimitless backroad & these gold-drunk sycamores
& we don’t crank out speedsters anymore so The Crossroads of America
just means Keep On Passing Through. I’m used to it. We’re children of the
dent corn & the bonafides atop our bestsellers declaring our lives “stark!”
and “bracing!” come two to a pack like toothbrushes & yes we have those.
Still my shift clutching my sorry little head in my “bleak!” and “grim!”
hands outside grubby shutdown factories doesn’t start for a few more hours
& I don’t punch in until sunrise at the assembly line where we cry chunky
tears of praline pie & lost opportunity into little Pyrex tubes to mail to the
shiny-haired Democrats & so I have time to tell you that when two things
that were once in contact remain so even after they’re far apart it’s called
sympathetic magic & I’ve got divine correspondence with my neck of the
woods & when we grasp each other’s collars from far flung towns that’s
charm at a distance. If I brewed potions I’d stir in our tree frogs’ spring
chirp & if I had a talisman it’d be a Dyngus Day pussywillow branch & if I
had a poppet I’d tuck her in under an album quilt I pieced myself & the truth
is that leaving home is like sea monkeys; it looks nothing like we were
promised.
OUR RUSTBELT HOMETOWN HAS BEEN
SHRINKY-DINKED
into talking points again & my heartland pride is acid-washed and cuffed
and worth more worn ironically & I’ve reverse yellow-brick-roaded from
the big city to this speedlimitless backroad & these gold-drunk sycamores
& we don’t crank out speedsters anymore so The Crossroads of America
just means Keep On Passing Through. I’m used to it. We’re children of the
dent corn & the bonafides atop our bestsellers declaring our lives “stark!”
and “bracing!” come two to a pack like toothbrushes & yes we have those.
Still my shift clutching my sorry little head in my “bleak!” and “grim!”
hands outside grubby shutdown factories doesn’t start for a few more hours
& I don’t punch in until sunrise at the assembly line where we cry chunky
tears of praline pie & lost opportunity into little Pyrex tubes to mail to the
shiny-haired Democrats & so I have time to tell you that when two things
that were once in contact remain so even after they’re far apart it’s called
sympathetic magic & I’ve got divine correspondence with my neck of the
woods & when we grasp each other’s collars from far flung towns that’s
charm at a distance. If I brewed potions I’d stir in our tree frogs’ spring
chirp & if I had a talisman it’d be a Dyngus Day pussywillow branch & if I
had a poppet I’d tuck her in under an album quilt I pieced myself & the truth
is that leaving home is like sea monkeys; it looks nothing like we were
promised.