Suburbia

by Michael Biehl

God bless cookie–cutter houses,
cookie–cutter poems, cookie–cutter people.
Pigeons! Pizzas!
Penelope gazes about, and licks her chops.
One hundred and one stores, all mass–minded,
even Vuitton —
the staged lighting,
the clerks’ sitcom happiness,
the supportive, soporific music . . .
Penelope gazes and muses,
her eternal soul grazes
on plants pretending to be plastic.
She has earrings
on her mind,
something gaudy, dangling, vulgar,
yet laser–like —
pink striped chartreuse.
She’s a sucker, one born every minute,
and loves it. Sucking the lollipop
of shopping, her soul
happily bobbing
like a toy boat on a baby sea.
She doesn’t blame her optimistic parents
for being surface, she blesses them for it,
this gargantuan gift
of superficiality:
which requires such intelligence, diligence, discipline
that it has all the elements of prayer:
prayer sufficient
unto the day.