I was sitting across from the rotating sign
For the Liberty Brass Turning Company
Automatic Screw Machine Products
And brooding about our fathers
Always on the make to make more money
Screw Machine Products Automatic
Tender wounded brassy unsystematic
Free American men obsessing about margins
Machine Products Automatic Screw
Selling every day of their God-damned lives
To some Liberty Brass Turning Company
Products Automatic Screw Machine
Until they were screwed into boxes
And planted in plots paid and unpaid
Automatic Screw Machine Products
(From the March 15, 2010 issue of The New Yorker.)
