Invasive Species

Kansas’ climate is not like Pluto’s, nor Jupiter’s.
The summer air is hot and thick and wet,
it coats the corn fields in purple sweat, cries
beneath a red-eye sun. Then winter comes
enthusiastically and unwelcome like
Westborough Baptists, inspiring murder and
dreams of departure. Though easy to traverse,

few are compelled to visit. Native kids
swim in cow patty ponds, fling their freckling
bodies from swinging ropes into strip mines.
If there were fish down there, we know
they were put there, like the lakes, by men.
And just as no one comes, rarely
does one leave. Still, somehow,

stray stalks of wheat rivers, an artist’s
elusive motion, wend their way like weeds
into escapees’ homes. Yellow grass strategic
as cockroaches boarding an open suitcase –
hitching across state borders – buried deep
in a neural knot, pinched between canine
and incisor, tucked behind a weary ear.