City of Progress

Each day, another building

materializes: a post-urban

themed burrito restaurant,

a payday loan kiosk,

an abandoned gas station

shuttered with plywood.

Some think the dead build them

while we sleep.

Others believe

there’s a city behind the city

being slowly revealed to us.

It’s wondrous, really—

we’re moon-eyed with wonder—

really.

The photographs go all runny,

and we carve busts of the saviors

from Styrofoam.

We are too alone

to be lonely.