Triumph of the goblin, by Campbell McGrath

Days I am the lightning storm, merciless in my judgment. 

Let the fools choke on the grease of their ignorance.

Let dogs devour the sweet pineapple in its cans.

Let the politicians rot in hell. 

But the beauty of the land shames me, it is 

preposterous and immense and I feel too little love for it 

in my heart, I am worn down. 

Days I walk among my countrymen and believe 

all will be well, brothers and sisters, 

let campfires blossom across the valley, let us mingle 

our herds together. Days I think 

god help us 

but I know that he will not,

we must rely upon ourselves 

and from the airplane it should be clear, 

even to Thoreau, that we are trying. 

This gouged, that sprung, those stripped bare. 

New highway spurs and off-ramps leading nowhere 

stand as proof carved into the raw, red dirt 

of belief in our continuing destiny—

the future shall be diversely out-parceled,

the future is a mixed-use project.

Farmland, ex-urban dross, dam-fed lakes 

glinting like mirror-glyphs stenciled

among rough hills. The meadow 

behind Wendy’s remains 

the fringe of a wilderness in which beasts of prey 

stalk a vanishing claim. Carpet mills, 

distribution centers, boulevards spoked among strip malls 

which even in the most forsaken municipality 

feature nail salons, psychics, and semiautomatic weapons.

I have good reason to believe

it is the Festival of Shrimp this month at Red Lobster 

and I am hopeful that may suffice but who 

can know for sure? Of what 

may we ever speak with absolute certainty? 

The Lord created heaven and earth from the void.

There is no such thing as too much reverb in a surf rock song. 

Texas, like a lawless, uncivilized lodestone

unbalances the entire nation 

but brings to our lives the exultancy of the unhinged.

From up here, the towns resemble fortresses,

primitive defenses against the unknowable earth. 

Storm clouds streaming across the prairie, cinder gray 

with a black band along the horizon

strobed by distant lightning. You can almost hear

the tornado sirens. Trees filling out, April green, 

toy cars on little highways, a model railroad landscape 

made of sponge and toothpicks and poster paint, 

but no, the places we live in are real, 

Okahumpa and Monroeville and East Orange exist

even if the nation remains metaphorical.

Once America was a city on a hill, 

once it was a tall ship 

carrying the dreams of yearning masses

and another ship packed with the bodies of the enslaved. 

Once it was a clearing in the forest haunted by owls, 

a wagon train, a factory, a shootout at the OK Corral.

Once it was a declaration, once it was an address. 

America was never a poem but for a while

it was a novel about a white whale 

and for decades it was a movie starring John Wayne 

though for most of my life it has been a TV show, 

often a sitcom, sentimental and banal, 

sometimes a classy drama, admirable if dull, 

and now it is a jamboree of grotesques. 

Here come the ghouls, the bedazzled militia, here come

the private equity guys sharpening their pencils. 

Here comes Ivanka, everybody run! 

Here comes Tom Brady in a blood-red MAGA hat, 

his political future is off the charts, 

he knows things, Tom, he’s a fucking oracle 

toiling for the last plantation owners in the land 

but you don’t eat the goose that lays the golden eggs

all at once says the three-legged pig. Dude,

here come the Black Friday hordes on their obesity scooters

down the aisles of Walmart, everyday is Black Friday 

in these pews, open the fucking doors, 

asshole! RIP, Jdimytai Damour,

RIP, Sears-Roebuck. Here’s Eddie Lampert

looting corpses on the battlefield, 

war all the time, 

on earth as in heaven, 9/11 24/7.

Here’s Alex Jones in his tinfoil hat 

shilling the dumb-dumb jelly stashed in his root cellar, 

subscribe to save, folks, only $39 a jar. 

Harvest of jackals. Harvest of the impaired.

Harvest of virgins blessed by the ghost of Tammy Faye.

Ammo ammo ammo, don’t shoot 

until the looting starts, 

everybody run says the three-legged teleprompter, 

don’t fear the reaper, don’t bleed out, 

amigo, somebody gotta clean these goddamn cells. 

Here come the private equity guys sharpening their bayonets,

glue factory triple shift union-free from my dead fingers, 

Obama death panels overseen by Ewoks,

Four-Twenty Bitches for Q, Antifa noodle heads

spray-painting brass stallions uptown. 

Here comes Hillary Prison-ton 

in a pantsuit befitting the Queen of Copenhagen 

crossbred with which Teletubby—

is it Tinky-Winky?—remember Benghazi 

says the three-legged pain management consultant.

The Sacklers feel your suffering, compadre.

Got my scrips in Eff-El-Ay, true that, true that.

Here come the lawyers with the NDAs

and a sack of Popeye’s Spicy Chicken Sandwiches

as a cold wind whips across the parking lot

outside Charles Town, West Virginia,

outside Cody, Wyoming, outside Lincoln, 

Minnesota, Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin, Vermont,

cold wind and the first, lace-like snow of the season 

sifting down as evening falls, the blur

of it like an old picture tube on the fritz, 

a yellowing veil in the window of a closed-down bridal shop 

on a street of closed-down stores

beside tracks where the train no longer runs.

A man is throwing rocks beneath a sodium street light

at the shattered plate-glass window 

as a familiar figure scuttles into the shadows.

Avert your glance. Keep still. Do not utter

the name of the goblin

for such is the source of his power, the enchantment 

by which he binds souls to his dark errand. 

There is hardly anything left to break,

and the last of the window-glass, as it falls,

is singing a little song of desolation.

How much longer can the man keep throwing stones?

How far can we stray and yet return?

How deep into the desert can we wander, America,

before that song is all we hear?