Every Quik Lube Midwest city

has its own dead kid, a We Buy

Gold & Coins billboard assaulting

oncoming traffic, a manmade lake

even the locals don’t want to talk

about. The dead kid is twenty years

stretching into half of a century.

There’s always, in every double-parked

Midwest city, a missing dog sign with

cash reward, a retro-style hotdog shop,

a Civil War-era cannon aimed at

city hall. Cause of death for the dead kid

gets blurry, ages poorly. The tanning salon,

the derelict silo, a bar raided by the FBI

because it back slid, became a brothel.

All hands are clean in these Midwest cities –

and it’s never the dead kid’s fault.

If the dead kid caught the blame he or she

would not be a dead kid, but a warning

or PSA to prevent copycat dead kids 

from sprouting up. Nix the bad weed

or a loaded-said-to-be-unloaded gun.

Every scratch ‘n dent Midwest city

plays a historically significant role in

the Revolutionary War but which one exactly

escapes me, said someone’s grandpa.

There’s always a sign-holding guy lamenting

our station in life: cosmic dust on solar wind.

Every cult-panicked Midwest city houses

the husk of a K-Mart and a pile of unread books

from the shuttered Borders – if you’re from the kind

of Midwest city once in possession of a Borders

or people who read. The dead kid was faulty

wiring, gone-to-soon, an undiagnosed lump,

a house fire, or carbon monoxide poisoning.

Every Midwest city is a battle cry in need 

of a battle. Every dead kid is a lighthouse

without a harbor or water – just a shipwreck

in the middle of a cornfield next to an oil derrick.