The City
Casey Goodwin

All the good boys carry empty little coffins
As they walk across the town

They place the goods of the corner store
into the coffins without care
for the coffins are deeper than they look

They stop at the clinic and smile as they pack up the anesthetic, the scalpel
the operating chair
They take the books from the classroom
the bricks from the old warehouse walls
the knives from the meatpacking plant.

They untie the tennis net,
rolling and forcing the air out
to make it fit
They unscrew the basketball hoop
and fold in the state football banner

They leave the bibles in their pews
their overalls and oversized flannels in their drawers.
Their fathers’ tools don’t fit in the coffins
And have to stay

They walk past the medicine cabinet
The city will be their drug
Guns stay too
because what is there to hunt
between skyscrapers

They end with a walk in the fields from which they came
before balancing out the coffins with clods of soil

Then they pile all the little coffins on their shoulders
and with a wave and a nod
leave for the city

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