Walk a while in any direction and you'll find

a field

or an empty bottle

or a pop can filled with purple gas
It's not big enough to be a real city

but, heck, there's a mall

you could walk across it with three long-legged strides,

but no one does
They got them new VLTs at the motel bar

and it's always the mayor's wife

plugging quarters, with one eye closed

and her daughter's hips
swaying up the stairs beside the beer vendor

entering red-curtained rooms

peering out the window to pavement and weeds

chain-link fence around the back lot
Talk about

the weather

the crops

the price of milk
ask the girl at the greasy counter

not a girl really

she's been there twenty years

but ask her anyway
about the straight line of road

about her bubblegum lips

about the shallow lake,

its cavernous floor that swallows your foot
ask her where the water

comes from

where it goes

and why on earth