Next stop, Walmart, says the bus driver
over the intercom as his steel-gray vehicle
cruises by my corner apartment
once every forty-five minutes, on the dot,
all day from sunrise to sunset.

I guess I could just shut the window.
But my cat likes to fold like half-hearted origami
in the breeze and stare at the law office
from whence spill blushing teenagers
still shaking off their Friday hangovers.

Today, the downtown church bells
are busy piping out their pre-recorded hymns
to drown out the Toby Keith songs
emanating from pick-up trucks with steel nuts
sparking beneath the license plates.

This is Muncie–home to a closed jar factory,
tattooed libertarians, and a university
of failed writers trying to inspire
the next crop of millennial farm boys
moonlighting as slam poets on weekends.

White River looks muddy this season,
bellying along between banks of tiger lilies.
Friends complain of property taxes,
the latest edition of The Norton Reader,
the openly gay barista at Starbuck's.

Then my lover stops by with news:
the Cancer Center might lose its funding,
already she's been asked to give up
her private office and stapler.
I tell her it's our memories that kill us.

Next stop, Walmart, says the bus driver
over the intercom as his steel-gray vehicle
cruises by my corner apartment
once every forty-five minutes, on the dot,
all day from sunrise to sunset.

I guess I could just shut the window.
But my cat likes to fold like half-hearted origami
in the breeze and stare at the law office
from whence spill blushing teenagers
still shaking off their Friday hangovers.

Today, the downtown church bells
are busy piping out their pre-recorded hymns
to drown out the Toby Keith songs
emanating from pick-up trucks with steel nuts
sparking beneath the license plates.

This is Muncie–home to a closed jar factory,
tattooed libertarians, and a university
of failed writers trying to inspire
the next crop of millennial farm boys
moonlighting as slam poets on weekends.

White River looks muddy this season,
bellying along between banks of tiger lilies.
Friends complain of property taxes,
the latest edition of The Norton Reader,
the openly gay barista at Starbuck's.

Then my lover stops by with news:
the Cancer Center might lose its funding,
already she's been asked to give up
her private office and stapler.
I tell her it's our memories that kill us.

Still, the fired bricks of Old National Bank
climb skyward like palms minus fingers,
still the whitetails stray onto Cardinal Greenway
and nibble on the roses of Minnetrista
where art majors hang construction paper.

Tonight, I will stop to smoke a joint
in an alley named after David Letterman.
I will pretend to like Garfield cartoons.
And if anyone asks me where I'm from,
I'll look them right in the eye and say: Iowa.