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Next poem is a poem about
a truck stop in Minnesota.

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And the speaker of the poem
is a fairly educated man

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who envies the way the
truckers are able to get along

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with the waitress.

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Somehow the waitress doesn't
pay sufficient attention to him.

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He doesn't have the
right usage or something.

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And he starts to become
paranoid and believe

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that this is very much
tied up with his inability

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to be happy in the middle of
this country to come to terms

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with a certain kind of America.

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"Truck Stop, Minnesota."

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"The waitress looks at my face
as if it were a small tip.

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I'm tempted to come
back at her with java,

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but I say coffee politely,
and tell her how I want it.

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Her body has the alert
sleepiness of a cat's, her

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face the indecency
of a billboard.

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She is the America I
would like to love.

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Sweetheart, the truckers
call her, honey, doll.

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For each of them she smiles.

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I envy them, I'm full
of lust and good usage

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lost here, paranoid.

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I imagine every
man she's left with

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has smelled of familiar food,
has peppered her with wild slang

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until she was damp and loose.

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I do nothing but ask for a check
and drift out into the night

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air, let my dreams lift her
tired feet off the ground

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into the sweet inarticulate
democracy beyond my ears

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and keep moving until I'm home
in the middle of my country."

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