There are
So many fucking Christians
In this desert town
When strangers meet
They exchange churches
Like kids comparing baseball cards

Cell phones
Are the boom boxes
Of the new millennium

The desert encourages
Forty year old women
With fifty-year wrinkles
Brown
And
Crevassed
To wear tight sweaters
Short denim skirts
And fuck-me boots

In a group of ten teenage boys
Eight are skinheads
Seven are puffy gym-class bodybuilders
Four (or five) are white supremists
In hip-hop baggies
Two
Are missing
Home, hovering over their laptops
Plotting their catastrophic statements
And cowering in fear of their peers.

NASCAR should have a church here.
Seriously.

New blue jeans
Pressed
Equal dress slacks

I wonder how the
Punks
Hippies
Pagans
Queers
Democrats
Skeptics
Last ’round these here parts?

And where do they hide?

And where do I find them?

— written from a Starbucks in Victorville, CA, USA