Falls City Poem by Robert Rorabeck

The factories of our lives
The managers
Create us on the assembly
Line of needing parts
The duality of sexes
Requires insertion
Like light sockets
Like a slaughter house
To come undone in
Midwestern planes abandon/ feeding it/
Streets and long fertile
Fields roofs and fences
Fencing overweight lives
Fed on troughs of bright TV
Caged in by slick cords
Of power-line and preaching Elvises
Towering sentinel communication
Towers broadcasting sparks
Above the prefabricated
Houses across the street
From paradise city trailer parks
Lined up in rows of
Forgotten promises and
Christmas tree lights
Subordinates to the factory
Processed meats
Great conveyor belts
Running down hands
To put us together on
The long dead end roads
Of dust
Of America’s heartland
Forever looking out windows
Seeing inside the panes
Trains leaving down the tracks
Of another’s childhood
While the power lines
Stream with electric
Clatter
Of minimum wage
Fallout
The alienist
Our life here
The dust bowl of America
Manufactured

*For Brandon Tina