Of Mrs. Carrasco


*She came, Carrasco said, to "ask God to restore the country.  Our freedom 
is lost.  My freedoms are lost.  To be able to preach anywhere we want, to 
have God in our schools, to drive any kind of car we want and if I want to 
drive a gas guzzler, I can, if I want to eat a lot of sugar and salt, and I 
shouldn't be forced to buy medical care."

Carrasco paused, but only briefly.  "To be able to burn the kind of light 
bulb I want," she added.  "The list goes on."*

 "The Church of Glenn Beck" by Ruth Marcus
          *Washington Post*,  September 1, 2010


She needs a certain spray.
She could ask her husband to pick it up
on his way home from work, but that
would not be part of her role,
or his.  It is, if not
a feminine, then a personal spray,
essential for performance of her role.
At their crystal cathedral
on Sundays, the preacher makes a big point
of roles: they are Heaven’s job descriptions,
he says, and we all know
who the Boss is.
Her husband squares his square face
in awe of his own husbandliness
and Mrs. Carrasco simpers,
their roles exalted in this performance.
For which they are promised wealth, perfection, health,
and become crystal.

The spray is not for her perm,
not for her armpits or lady parts.
It will add neither life
to her hair, nor the appearance in crises
of having been washed.
Nor mountain freshness to doggy rooms
or laundry.  No, this spray has
a greater role, which is to keep
her together.  For Mrs. Carrasco,
after her second facelift, went in
for nanotechnology.  Her new tautness
enhances her husband’s performance.
But without the spray
cellulite would reappear, then give way
to craters as Mrs. Carrasco
oozed away, and the meat beneath
escaping nanites
bore uncomfortable witness.

So she drives the few blocks
to the mall.  Her car is a mighty fortress.
Immigrants packing
their ill-gotten gains and babies
to emigrate before
a vengeful sunset; glaringly godless
people on streetcorners, lazy, not at work;
drugged youth and globular types
losing somatic coherence – all
cheer, as she passes,
her obvious holiness:
however much they hate,
they cannot help but love.  And Mrs. Carrasco
parks, and shops, and eats in a space
made easy to roam as if by her will,
and sprinkles freedom on her food;
then in a restroom
repairs her nanites, face, and metabolism.

But the spray is only relatively
effective; and rising from
a/c exhausts to the stratosphere,
bits of Mrs. Carrasco
sift around the world.  The very hills
become friable.  The liberal mind is full of rot.
Nanites enter the food chain.
The liberal mind is full of chains.
The sea grows slowly colloidal; the heads of
dying fish surface like the cowls
of pilgrims seeking transcendence
around the garbage continent mid-ocean
that broods on the denatured waves.
Although it is the nature of its films
and plastics to resist, they too
will be consumed, but meanwhile bless
and empathize with the new element:
How sad to be grey goo.