Sales

Selling you the dream car
that all the kids love,
that makes you big and potent,
that opens all the warm garage doors,
that sniffs out the best parking spots,
that finds the unexpired and broken meters,
that speeds without consequence,
that stops with each front wheel centered on a bison-headed nickel,
that eats nothing but air and good intentions;

selling you the best house
in the best neighborhood,
in the right zip code,
in a grove of window-shading trees,
in a street of charm and comfort,
in a color mixed from eagle’s tears,
in a weather pattern best described as personalized,
in a storm of good and distant thunder,
in a rainbow promise of yours forever;

selling you the joyous reincarnation
of your grandparents’ hard and fast belief in a just world, 
of their stubborn faces bent over task and faith,
of their bank-backed presence as good citizens,
of their trust in the handshake,
of their unshakable duty to the flag-donning boys of summer,
of their simple vision of resting under a willow at the close of day;

selling you on it 
as a mythology, a set of stories
that gives shaded meaning
though a different one is glaring;

as a cover up for the human-selling
that made it all happen;
as a screen before the bloody grounds
of human villages burned;
as a way to sate a gnawing truth
before it wakes you up starving
in the night: 

that what’s being sold 
is stolen property and labor
from the back of a rickety truck
in the dark, 

and the whole thing’s
built on a slim prayer
that we will never stop buying.