I want to read the--
there's a longer poem in the book.
It's in about 17 parts.
And it was inspired by a board game.
I got a coffee table book about the early history
of board games.
And one of the things that struck me immediately--
if you know this about "Monopoly"--
you all have played "Monopoly," have you not?
Yes.
You're true Americans.
We've played "Monopoly," haven't we?
"Monopoly" was originally invented
by a woman named Lizzie Magie, who was a Georgist.
And Georgists believed in the equal distribution of wealth
and of labor and everything else.
And so her game was called "The Landlord's Game."
And the game was based around this idea
that you would distribute the land and the labor
and the money and everything else equally.
And then, well, Charles Darrow found her game.
And then he called it "Monopoly."
And it became the game that we know,
where you join with your family members
on a lovely Saturday evening and try
to break each other on the wheel of capitalism.
And so I wanted to emulate that--
the form of the board game by putting into pieces
and seeing how that might work once you put them together.
It's called "National Anthem."
"1.
Locusts eat Ohio alive.
June is the first month in bank robbery season.
Silky tornado nestles in the trash.
Angles of neckties act as compasses for flight.
2.
You will disappear.
3.
You will feel the need to disappear.
4.
In an abandoned lot, a slow conglomerate of green tongues
devour a dead bird.
5.
Fill in the blank.
This new-century sky is, A, noctilucent.
B, nacreous.
C, lenticular.
D, unidentifiable as fluoride.
E, all the above.
6.
The sky is a cinder block smashed by hydrogen and moth
light.
7.
Wreckage is a kind of question.
It asks you to reconsider your inventory.
8.
Broken jackknife?
Decoder ring?
Come back.
Milk-white set of marbles?
Come back.
Boiled shark jaws?
Sloop load of clams?
Antique copper brooch?
Please, come back.
This wristwatch won't tick, won't heirloom, but disappoint.
9.
In its abandoned lot, the dead bird is gone.
Green tongues twist slowly--
memory a thing that devours things that will devour things.
10.
Spare licks of lightning pepper the panhandle.
Trees teeth in a locust zone.
11.
Come back.
12.
Construction workers wear federal orange vests,
smoke cigarettes in the noon haze as they
undo the street's ceiling.
Cars run on boiled bones.
Smog rolls in like a prehistoric ghost to slumber.
At night, our cities are swallowed
in swamps of orange light.
Ghosts, federal as bone, boil around us.
13.
According to local sources, a well-kept lawn
is the simplest indicator of economic stability.
Also, burglars operate under the night's braille blanket.
Conversation is a politic of trivia.
A newspaper is a politic of a tree.
14.
In the beginning, atoms collided like German consonants.
Everything else stewed in the oil fields of Los Angeles.
15.
And ghosts, federal as bone, boil still around us.
16.
Already heat has broke loose of its zoo.
Children chew tar, kick cans, call strangers collect.
They drown the radioman in his radio.
17.
Come back.
Come back, children.
Come back and see the Midwest's checkerboard
from 30,000 feet, the smoke of industry leering like syrup
over the river, alming the sky of life."