by Zack Scholl

I saw the best minds of my generation
Isolated in pea-pod Xbox cubicles
Drooling over ash-stained mirrors
With blurry tattoos of bands with dead
Members, sniffing sand, hard
As their junk had been when they
Scoured the sidewalks
For booze breasts
While I laughed

Camouflage-covered cadavers
Melting into couches,
Seeping through the cushions
To the layers of pennies
Pushed down by
The weight of lethargy
And wallets full of blue bags

Looping ruminations
Of trees toppling down
Onto the roof of their parents’ house
Where the bedsprings
Rust and the bed falls down
Where the baby was born
Into piss-water and cigarette butts.

Where elegant nights on the town
Are marked by stale Olive Garden breadsticks
And 8 dollar whisky.
Where homogenous masses of Yuengling and denim
Sing Morissette karaoke
With appropriated rancor
Because they’d never known someone
Who ought to know.

I saw them
Board the train
To icy, silent Nowhere
With suitcases full of muscle shirts
And basketball shorts
Smiling spongy, toothless grins

I saw them
Die where they lived
And live where they died

I am with you in Pennsylvania!
Where the dissatisfied sprint endlessly on sunset treadmills

I am with you in Pennsylvania!
Where we sipped the breast milk of the Alleghenies

I am with you in Pennsylvania!
Where dixie exists outside of space and time

I am with you in Pennsylvania!
Where they threw garbage at our faces but my heart just wasn’t in it

I am with you in Pennsylvania!
But I’ve spit my long-cut woes into the river

I am with you in Pennsylvania!
And the trees are toppling down