THE UNITED STATES

 

If you asked what it is all about

I would say a field a green field

in the turning rows a killdeer

and after that barbed wire

the hedge with its cardinals

a blacktop then another field

 

Corn one of the main things

after water and before milk

for whiskey is in it and grits

gold for chickens pearls before swine

there is a factory in every plant

if we could be properly humble

 

it is the greatness of the nation

along with cartoon animation

automobiles and rock 'n roll

jazz and basketball evolved here

but not one other U.S. God

just the corn's imperial row

 

on row then Sylvester Stallone

and airbrushed Elvis thank you

very much ladies and gentlemen

Presley Dylan and the Supremes

no I would say a field a vast field

at the center top-hogs and cattle

 

then art the cites New York

Chicago Houston Seattle man

told me last week experts can

teach starlings to talk hell

televangelists may yet witness

in terza rima each stalk of corn

 

contributes it has been so

hybridized with its immense

ears it no longer resembles

maize it is what we have left

to barter for oil and microchips

tons of it siloed and elevated

 

to float us through droughts

and wars and speculations we ask

which will most cogently represent us

_Leaves of Grass_ or _The Simpsons_

there is the idea that every

living thing is a subset of human

 

control and the other notion

that though we may go on

a few hundred or thousand

years the poison has spilled

no more land will be made

the search for another arable

 

planet may prove moot as the

search for earthly sentience

meanwhile this taco here

crunches in the great scheme of

things we persist one people one

of the potential fates of corn

 

 

Rodney Jones

Shenandoah

The Washington and Lee University Review

Volume 55, Number 2

Fall 2005