CuppaGemma

St. Chris is clipped to keep us safe,
EZ pass marks discounted tolls, handmade
bows tell this vehicle was new, although often
instead there’s a little flag of where we were from
fading with the rosary beads or tassles

Are now permitted within moderation, stickers on the
back telling me- honk if I hate Bush, who’s proud
of their kid’s PS, believe in the Rangers, or insist
we never not remember a certain day of the year,
given the world fell down for a lot of this Island

And who breaks for fairies, supports our troops
in magnets, tells me that America is the greatest place
there ever was, except to boycott Walmart, Costco and
those darned import cars, now step on up and into
the SUV and watch the little sedanites beneath you

With coffee cups and Snapple bottles flanking the streets
like children released to the park in summer and the
sanitation officers with T.J. Eckleberg eyes instead
poking their sticks in my rubbish to verify
milk carton sortation a more urgent misdemeanor

We are lost with blue tooth technology, having
conver–stations without faces to read that lead
us through stop signs and polite lies as rear
seat DVDs play to little ones for ten minute
trips for take out dinners at two different places

And we carry tuneless winges over the cost of fuel,
no one else pumps or washes the windshield,
checking the oil as out of place as a proper gentleman
suggesting a walk with nowhere exactly in mind-
quiet company, but maybe a coffee later…