I live amid a string of small towns
In the belly of Michigan, filled with
Pork rinds and tobacco juice
Clerks pick burrs from their hair
And shake ticks from their eyes
Your child's kidnapper
Will be found in a trailer at the end of
A two-track road in one of these bergs
And will show up to court in a wheelchair
Saying he was paying for caregiver services
He’s the one who took a potshot at you
When you passed him on a two-lane road
After watching him watch you
In his rearview mirror
And driving under the speed limit
Occasionally braking
Even though you were five car lengths behind
He’s been told to quit panhandling
In front of the local grocery store
More than once,
To keep his hands out of the clothes
In the Thrift Store drop box
To leave the librarian alone
It’s not a place to get stoned
He steals your wifi, wood, and your gas
Throws his poo powdered turds in your trash
Carries a pistol and a knife
His is a savage life
Where everyone is out to get him
He’s the one we thought we put behind us
The one we left in high school
With a passing grade of D-
2 responses to “In the Belly of Michigan – A free verse poem”
Nice creative writing, the child’s kidnapper part had me paying close attention. The best thing for a writer, it had me thinking
Thank you for commenting. I like the challenge of jamming symbol and metaphor together as tightly as possible. The challenge for me here was to overcome the fact I was bullying a straw man by presenting the straw man as someone real, hard to dismiss.