The Book of Weston

live apocalyptic lives

amongst rusted trucks, sunken

roofs on mildewed trailers,

kudzu climbing up thrift stores

and shattered factory windows,

smoke shops next to churches

built in abandoned shopping malls

with preachers on screens

a thousand miles away

from hollow main streets, echoes

of a hopeful past, now

sucked dry by corporations

with cavernous stores stationed

next to interstate exits

- feeding, extracting -

and yet these people live on;

they recreate, procreate,

build community in this

fractured wasteland of a country,

and we fly over them,

noses in the clouds,

like it's not a miracle.