Poem #6

The hillbillies envy the fry chefs who are down from the hills
The hillbillies envy grand larceny victims
They envy ship-shape memoirs of cattle ranchers and gypsies
They envy morticians, notary publics, and town drunks.
(I had such a good opposite to ‘hillbillies’ yesterday
It was a grand word, it came to me on the subway)
Hillbillies never sit every morning on the subway
They don’t tear paper at their local Goodwill
They’re never hired as zookeepers, they fail to become film editors
All because they have no reality
There is a word but no thing
The word exists on the ground
The people live in the woods
There might be a small hill
But their day is quiet and the words that are spoken
do not include ‘hillbilly’ and no one
Probably says it to their faces and no one
Probably even says it anymore