In Support of Corporate Farms

Stalin scythed wheat in Russian Georgia, Mao waddled knee-
deep in a rice paddy field, and Saddam Hussein tended his uncle's
melon patch on the banks of the Euphrates. Mussolini

would be the type of dictator to keep a tomato garden.
I think this might say something about human existence:
what the land makes us do. The disenfranchised Cain giving

the boulder to Abel. Closeness to a speck of ground
only makes us want more. To kill whoever needs to be killed
to get it and to hang them by their fat calloused toes
under the drying sun. Marx had it wrong. The revolution

would not come from the city, where it didn't matter
if you knew the upstairs couple or not (but took
comfort in the sound of them making love occasionally)

or the fact of a park with a fountain that makes you smile.
The danger lies in the lonely farm, dirt on the palm's
lifeline. Let stalks of corn miles from anywhere be their own

kind of wilderness. Let a stranger snatch them up with some
newfangled harvester, thinking only of going to his suburban home,
his curtained master bedroom, the clanging of trashcans his rooster.

Copyright © 2008 Cody Lumpkin All rights reserved
from New Orleans Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission