Glory be to the guy who invented Missouri for money,
with its plateglass heat, its thick-tressed storms,
its power outages, its broken water mains;
glory be to these broken-up brick stoops full of women who sit
calicoed, bandannaed, laughing and fanning at their men
making finger v-signs with light and dark roughened hands
who pull in from the Shop 'n Save and haul out silver bags of ice
from their Ford F-lines and pass them around;
glory be to Cedric's Fish Fry for cooking up everything
over a lit trash can before it all goes bad, glory to the beer
to be drunk while it's still cool, glory be to the E felony
of freeing the over-full fire hydrant, feeling the loose damp shirt
on the body; glory be to wearing nothing much, dancing with strangers,
glory be to someone's six-pack of D batteries, for the flashlights,
for the boom boxes blaring the bleats of poetry, a band called pain,
glory to the little girl with the doll tucked football-style under her arm,
its boy hair crisped sleek in the middle, two like waves meeting each to each,
glory to her mommy, whose feet hurt, who's home now
whose love for this girl in this place makes her skin feel raw and soft;
glory for half a moon that haloes everybody the same this night
for the nest of debris and leaves we rest on, and later, in the hot dark,
while I wave a lazy magazine, glory to the found matches you touch
to our Mary and Jesus industrial candles, lighting up
your sweat-dabbed glorious face;
para que no me atormenten de nuevo sino que seamos salvajes en la gloria del espiritu santo.
Praise this.