Modern Ruins of the American Frontier

Modern Ruins of the American Frontier I read about the collapse of your dreamin a Mexican newspaper plasteredon the back of an American flag I didn’t know you were there, sister-struggling, nor did I go to see for myself I, only looking through the spy glassset up by the eye of an artistrevealing walls made of plywood, covered with milk paint andcolorful papier-mâché cut-outs, quickly shifting, melting and contorting through all channels of spin but when the walls fell, the construct did not burn,or bake like porous pottery in a kiln, Instead, it erupted and disregarded trinkets and treasure,collected Lady Liberties and bobble-headstraded for at American Pipe and Pawn those dreams of comfort and latitude collected dustthose things that made you proud,made you one of us—so you thought but that white-gloved eagle—deliverer of false hopepricked and chipped away at your thatched rooftop, one piece at a time,those hope-filled, make-shift bungalows exposed and hope was all you had, sisterthe road from home to farmbeside a hilltop in Central Mexico eighteen months picking beans and potatoeswith your family, babe in tow bellies full, but ragged tiredto come back once again to be underserved. Sold out to the American pipe dream. ~Julie Demoff Larson