miles of emptiness
nothing to stop even the wind
a car can drive all day
and the driver not know any change
but now a friend
not Nebraska but a woman
who once hailed from there
and has been ensnared
pulled back
and kept against her will
by the state
caught in its own coils
doing evil now in what was surely designed
once for doing good
or at least preventing evil
the state bobbing relentlessly
as a pump drawing oil from a well
and people can only watch apparently
another poet sings Nebraska
and I hear his poem spoiled
instead of my hearing freedom
I see now a prison
and a jail
a bureaucrat's office
a doctor
endlessly testing and testing
for the evidence of drugs he will never find
testing and testing
Nebraska does not even need a cage
to keep the woman trapped
where would she run?
and how far?
and the doctor tests again
and still finds nothing
and the bureaucrat tells him
test again
and the days in Nebraska
run on the same
and if there is an afterworld
Kafka smiles in it and whispers
Nebraska
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