Three Poems by Justin Hyde

sociology

see the twenty-two year olds

huddled around the pool table

burgeoning dictators

cock-strong

ignorant like

bullets.

see the forty-five year olds

leaning over their beers in silence

smoke

mortar

the impotence of defeat

ringing in their ears.

see the thirty year olds

paranoid

caught on both sides

like deer

hung up

in barbed wire.

watch closely

the leopard eyed women

scattered amongst them

like leeches.

the old red barn

they'd bus in

blacks

from cedar rapids

to play horns

farmer was the sheriff's brother

no trouble there

back pasture full of cars

ames des-moines huxley bondurant

even see plates

from kossuth and wapsecon county

blacks would start

playin the horns

farmer selling milk pails

full of beer

for a quarter

ladies of the night

with blankets

working overtime

out in the pastures

we all got our

pickles popped

at the old red barn

then saturday night

sitting with our girlfriends

watching lawrence welk

in their parent's living room

heads still spinning

from cigarettes

the long hair

in sandals sold us

lawrence playing bubbles

or something else square

we'd be holding their hands

cause that's as far as

they'd let us go

one of us would start laughing

then we'd all fall in

what's funny? the girls would ask

what's so

all gone funny?

they'd get angry

stomping their feet

old dad

yelling down

from the top of the stairs

pipe down

or he'd

toss us out

with the cat.

cattle call

the people

are lonely

but their loneliness

is not sacred

not learned

or aged.

it's banal

like the inside

of a styrofoam

cup.

their love

is faceless

nameless

a blind

stupid force

two magnets

in a

clutch.