We can see the whole of Fairfield County from our plane, spread like jam or constellation;

below us in the creases of this city’s hands the houses stand military Moscow. Their veined

voltage pumps them full for all that is, begotten of wire, of widening sheen—

in downy unison they recite the Nicene Creed. From here we watch them glitter

when their lights blink, we like to see that neon patchwork swell. This city’s braced

with wire, electric energy tea-seeped sky—United Illumination needs more light to glint

off the whites of their corneas. President and CEO Frank Poirot removes his glasses:

There’s nothing but rock beneath these roads. And we’re germ-free

with our baby-in-a-babybjöurn and our frigid fingers. We are citizenship and brotherhood.

We’re residency and we are sterile nationality; we like our enzymes shipped us in boxes.

Our teeth are clean and our spines are straight enough. There’s nothing but rock—

And we’re glad he’s our spokesman, our Napoleon, he has ordered the cables into the ground.

So we ignore the land in all its rolling glory. Its layered splendor. The men

who have construction in their bones carve and carve and earth vomits stone.

The trunks of a thousand surgeoned trees will soon point skyward. Safe in our clean

machine we sip our bubble water and stretch our legs, we pray for buoyancy in air.