[Newspoetry] DATELINE Des Moines

[Paul Kotheimer]

I have not yet totalled Bill Wendling's car,  but I have laid waste to
nearly all of Iowa City and parts of Des Moines, accruing only eight
dollars in parking tickets in the process, which I dutifully paid this
morining. 

The captial building in Des Moines, which I destroyed yesterday with
Bill's car, used to be a bizarre and beautiful affair, not unlike the
Kremlin except with deep-sea diver helmets instead of onions for domes,
and surrounded by real civil war cannons (one of which seems to be aimed
directly at the YMCA, half-a-mile away and downhill)--and also by
fountains with bronze buffalo heads lapping from them, reminding Iowans
what it used to be like before the West was ethnically cleansed. 

Bronze statuary, Corinthian columns, and allegorical figures remind Iowans
that America is the corrupted Rome cobbled together from the stolen,
half-understood cultural ruins of an earlier cultural empire.  Just to the
right of the Temple on the Hill, for example, there stands a ceremonial
pillar dedicated to the patriotic memory of some frowning, bearded old 
senator, half-blind (we can surmise) with sclerosis and gout. 

Peace is the flying nun with the olive branch, imperceptible and
unattainable, at the top of the pillar.  First on her right and below
comes Progress, a winged young God, his balls just barely covered by an
armor codpiece, bearing a torch and holding the whole world in hand.  War
gets you good stuff, apparently.  Second on the right, comes Knowledge,
toting of course a gigantic book labelled "LAW" in his left hand, and in
his right, the Axe of Power--which in Italian is the root of the word
Fascism.  Behind him stands a naked-breasted lady with a cornucopia full
of coins--Prosperity. 
 
On the left come lady Liberty, arms outstretched, followed by Family,
bare-breasted too, clutching a boy-baby to feed; and last, bringing up the
rear on the left, it's Labor, mustachioed, rolled sleeves, bearing the
tools of his trade and his bundle of wheat. 

Even allegories, apparently, have got to eat.