The Episteme of Iowa.

Ford, Stephanie

    Let the episteme of Iowa
   be a bitch-slap in sequence: the wet green fields,
   the Kum and Go's plastic thatch,
   the hard-to-open seal on everything, everything.
   As the percolator snaps on,
   as frost stuns the seedling, Iowa,
   teach us to parse the world
   with the butter knife of acquiescence,
   breathless, low, equivocal--
   Iowa: We Poor But We Have Fun
,
   a tap of ash that half-misses the tray,
   pre-recorded chimes to break in a Sunday.
   For if, under pressure of large questions--
   when to foreclose, how to untie a yellow ribbon
   after the body is found--
   if, still, you see a single thing
   clearly, without blinking--
   the honey locust dappling a stockyard,
   a silver procession of corroding silos,
   even this river of Pizza Hut fry grease--
   you may do some reckless good
   as, after a spell of rain,
   dogwood and forsythia ignite
   streets named like a drinking game,
   Broad, High, Park, and Main,
   with such a largesse of questions--
   the unfixed natures of grace, weather,
   and the price of soybeans,
   each requiring our minds' subtle measure--
   and as, on moonless nights,
   Iowa offers darkness enough
   to watch the universe shrug,
   and light enough, also, to weave our way home.