small town clowns with snuff can rings
on the back pockets of their faded blue jeans
driving around in primer splotched ’82 Camaro’s
past the old mining houses
little girls with scraped knees
and dirty pink blouses
stand beside the old back roads
holding hairless
nude baby dollies
whose eyes won’t blink anymore
and the plastic is scraped
from small pieces of cinder
still embedded
out a’past the rotted front porch
in the crabgrass yard
sit rusted remains of bicycles,
cars, and a child’s swingset
the sun is still golden
even on the nettles
and broken glass
in the abandoned
overgrown lot
that used to be the town pool
in the 1950’s