The highway is cut for paper-dolls.
Flimsy, we drive.
We are shallow catalogue-models.
They have pasted us to cardboard.

My father has a bend in his back.
My mother’s ear is cropped.
This is a blunt-fingered child’s fault!
Blame it on the one who did the cutting-out.

Children should not play with paper dolls.
They fold them and ruin them.
We drive through the flat corn and grey sky.
Against it,
the white houses are glossy.

The mud saves our pickup tracks to nurse;
Keeps them then undoes them,
ungrateful imprints.

Does no one want what we’ve left?
Regret has made the whole world shallow.
We stamp our feet upon the door mats
to loose what still clings.
We refuse entrance to the mud.

Heartlessly, we leave our shoes in the hall.
We leave the trees to themselves by the creek.

The world is overflowing her borders.
Poor woman, the topsoil is too flimsy
to contain her, strong woman.
Her hair is thin.

The children of the world bounce babies
upon the carpet.
We are heartless paper-dolls.
We know there is only a house-floor
between them and the cold ground
but we leave.

High on truck-wheels,
our card-board backs keep us from jiggling.
We wear seat-belts against the wind
and the heating vent. It could suck us in
with the carbon monoxide
or radiator steam.
Gases and dead animals
line the highway like beggars.
Overstated landscape.