Elegy for the American Dream

Remember us with our animals — tabby, chihuahua, pot-bellied pig, their faces alive with imputed thoughts that they thankfully never voice, antidotes to the never-quiet barkers on our screens. Remember us with our screens, those escape hatches. Remember us lifting our pets as we lift each other’s bodies to our avid, lonely mouths, saying: these ones we will spare, these ones we will hold in our thoughts, hemmed in by indifferent neighbors & blank streets in subdivisions where the last untended corners host colonies from Eurasia. Remember us on our mowers sailing alone around the yard, faithful as any pilgrim to a labyrinth. Remember us on our toilets, learning to let go (with the aid of laxatives) in our most often remodeled room, enthroned above the waters of a vast & literal Lethe whose tributaries drain every home & office. This is what we love, more than anything: the privilege of absent-mindedness. This magic trick. We flush, & our shit & piss, our used condoms & tampons, our unused medications, our extra-soft toilet paper made entirely from tree pulp — it all spins around three times & vanishes with a gurgle. Remember us with our exclusive membership cards & our spent members. When we die, fill us with preservatives & seal us away beneath an immaculate lawn. Remember us who labored so hard to forget.