someone has gone and poked a hole through Ohio,
again,
and all the rivers are circling, circling and
burning and rushing, down through some bottomless
insubstantial place;
and they’re washing us all away, all of us,
bitten through by fleas and asbestos,
we who sipped on sweet waters from ancient pipes,
washed away like particulate, like sediment,
settling down in some hole, somewhere,
where we can get by just fine,
i guess, just fine,
somewhere foggy and freezing where
someone important won’t have to see us, somewhere
dark and dreadful, dark and dreary, a real
place called “home” by the starving,
somewhere in Ohio,
and – who knows? –
everywhere else, too.
