Next poem is a poem about a truck stop in Minnesota.
And the speaker of the poem is a fairly educated man
who envies the way the truckers are able to get along
with the waitress.
Somehow the waitress doesn't pay sufficient attention to him.
He doesn't have the right usage or something.
And he starts to become paranoid and believe
that this is very much tied up with his inability
to be happy in the middle of this country to come to terms
with a certain kind of America.
"Truck Stop, Minnesota."
"The waitress looks at my face as if it were a small tip.
I'm tempted to come back at her with java,
but I say coffee politely, and tell her how I want it.
Her body has the alert sleepiness of a cat's, her
face the indecency of a billboard.
She is the America I would like to love.
Sweetheart, the truckers call her, honey, doll.
For each of them she smiles.
I envy them, I'm full of lust and good usage
lost here, paranoid.
I imagine every man she's left with
has smelled of familiar food, has peppered her with wild slang
until she was damp and loose.
I do nothing but ask for a check and drift out into the night
air, let my dreams lift her tired feet off the ground
into the sweet inarticulate democracy beyond my ears
and keep moving until I'm home in the middle of my country."