The Santa Fe International Hostel has
a strict 1 bug per bedroom policy.
In some rooms, mine included,
this complementary beetle is dead.
This rule also extends to the bathrooms
(I learned at one in the morning)
and ostensibly the kitchen, lounge,
patio, front patio, upstairs bathroom,
etcetera.

A similar policy that the greyhound bus
service has enacted, states that
there must be at least one drunkard
per station. If not
one racist cop who suspects
one indian, native american,
mexican, hispanic, or generically
brown skinned person to be drunk.

During a 7 hour layover in Albuquerque,
I found that each time I
returned to the bathroom,
one more stall had been shut down,
slowly closing in on the single
stickiest and most terrifying toilet
in New Mexico, and possibly
greater North America.

My united states
has always been untarnished by
incompetent bus drivers who break
their glasses thus forcing
day long delays. And previous
to this week, I could not claim
any friendships with former
meth addicts, convicts, Canadians,
or people with face tattoos.
But this fourth of July,
I watched fireworks over a correctional
facility next door to a bus station
in Omaha, Nebraska and felt
a startlingly strong kinship
with the grab-bag mix of
tired, poor, huddled masses
who were all heading buckshot
across these fifty states. America,
you are not the golden coastal
cities I was grown in, with
their discreet poverty and
painted skies.
You are vast expanses of
aluminum plate houses and fields
of empty nothing dotted with
more motels than your inhabitants
can fill. Still
when the fireworks started
for a holy second
we all
caught our breath
and watched the sky
hopeful as our forefathers
And dreaming of the possibility of new life.