My Home Town

A mother's voice cries out in anguish. Her child is dead. Not only dead, but wrongly dead and wrongly judged by a world all too ready to believe in generalities.

How much easier it is to keep small towns beautiful and free from scandal than it is to face the fact that the alleys are dark and demons lurk behind every shadow. Churches are filled with the smiling faces of those whose children crucify each other with oxcycottin stuffed into the gaping mouths and hysterical eyes of those who make them jealous.

Mothers turn blind eyes on their adored children, buying them clothes and cars and video games so that they can use their own money to buy the more exotic toys of today's youth. Methodone wafts up staircases into nurseries and xanax comes in the back door with the milk.

Little girls bear children in their own likeness and little boys hang men by their heels from second story windows. The heartland needs a transplant. The hearts that beat here are on defibrillators, stopping every few minutes to refresh their delusions.