“Lies in the Mail”

The mail came today: a notice from the humane society and three issues of National Geographic. On the covers of the Natty Geographics were depicted outlandish, various places like Antarctica and the moon — places the average person will never go, but which cost the scientist thousands of dollars to attend, money which could have gone to better the public food and housing programs in the city of Chicago. The humane society is in my old living place. I don’t even live there anymore and they’re still sending me things beckoning me to help out animals, while in my town the hordes of impoverished smoke crack and rob banks, and a man emaciated to a horrific straw spindle, hand shaking on Wabash Ave. with empty cup extended, starves and thirsts to death in Chicago’s Loop, as tourists decorated with reams of shopping bags mope systematically by: the wheels keep turning.