Burlington is Nuts Today
by Elizabeth A.I. Powell

This is why I moved to the country?
Everyday is a hipster convention. Girl with $300 jeans,
sports her ANTIFA t-shirt and cork-heeled shoes.
I agree with her, but, but, but…
I would like some $300 jeans. Maybe. I think
of the poem “Sir Patrick Spens”:I have grown inpatient, I mean
impatient. Fake farmers in overalls selling their window-grown wheatgrass.
I’m stuck in a huge backup of cars that want into our taxpayer-
funded parking garage for people who only use credit cards—-
this used to be Vermont now it is the Upper West Side.
I keep pushing the button for a ticket. Moms
with asymmetrical haircuts drag their helicoptered children
in Birkenstocks toward home where the world was ending
on CNN just moments ago. A white dude on smack
wretches junk sick into the trashcan. A handsome
professor in Danish glasses and a brief case
looks on disapproving. I fear I am getting fat
and vulnerable. I think mean. In a bad mood. No longer
so pretty. My name itself makes a scratchy sound.
The dud who was my 100 percent match,
and is unobtainable, says he ‘smashes patriarchy,’ too.
I am myself skunked. The construction guy crunches
toward the hard core of his lunch, almost over. His rich parents
in Canada funded his grad degree with high hopes. I’m late for coffee
with the young Elizabeth Taylor of nonfiction.
I like to witness her youth and hope she gets everything
she thinks she wants. Later tonight, Rachel Maddow will pull
up the shade only to find more darkness. The world is ending,
boyscouts, hippies: Take a ticket,
have it validated since you can’t be—short-term
parking is full. Now, please pull the ticket out: Proceed.