Let me describe every town-by-the-interstate:
off the highway, concrete maze of gas stations,
hotels, fast-food chains, shopping complexes
for about a mile. The only real trees anchored
in abutments, adrift in asphalt and halogen light. 

In this miasma, nothing is distinct. Every fifteen miles
a new/the same McWendys, brokered by a buffer
of progress (I guess), this world we’ve become
accustomed to living through.

Sometimes I drive aimlessly back into the country,
where feral homes lie overgrown
next to these new McMansions
in fallow cornfields. I wonder, who is anything 
for? If you could see a JC Penney at Easter, browse
an acre of same-looking dresses that will deteriorate 
in six months, would you feel as sick as I do, having
lived here for so long?

I dream of climbing 
out of debt somehow and into my own plot of grass–
I guess many of my generation feel the same–
worried that the only patch of green we’ll ever see
will grow above our bodies,
capped by a granite stone.