To the Pathologically Bored American Man

[Lizzie]

Thank god for cell phones:
you never look around anymore.
Now you don't need to fire your rifle
out the window of your Firebird
at whatever bunny or chickadee
catches your predatory eye.

You don't need to speed along
gravel roads at midnight,
swerving to pick off raccoons
as if the thud under your truck
from their busting brains
earns you points in some video game.

You don't need to careen
into a neighbor's cornfield
—headlights off, doors open—
and slam the pedal to the floor
just to see what happens
[to make something happen].

You don't need to whack
mailboxes with your baseball bats,
or make up jokes with your dawgs
to throw at the ugly dog on her bike
or pin a pretty chick up against
the backside of the corner store.

You don't need to dispatch
your mom's hatchback into a ditch
on a dare, flipping your best friend
sixteen feet out the passenger window,
breaking his skull open on a tree,
dissolving both your lives at sixteen.

You don't seek ecstasy or boast destruction.
Now you sit next to your friends in silence—
phones lighting your faces from underneath
like expressionless paintings—
and the world goes on without you
as it should have all along.