Don’t deny that you can see it as clearly as you can see day. And while you’re not denying your obviously delighted reaction, see if you can also not deny that that’s maybe the best poem you’ve ever heard in your entire dumb life. Maybe perhaps perchance Shakespeare and Cummings and Yeats can all suck a fuxk.

Anyway, you can go anywhere to have C.W. McCall explained to you.¹ But Iowa is different - in order to appreciate “Audubon” you need to be able to imagine a town with one stoplight, one major cluster of grain silos in the one center of town, one main street, one Mexican family, and zero things better than any of that. It’s in Iowa, which is not 100% cornfields and cornfield people – there are pockets of culture and progressivism – but it’s not not a dusty methscape scattered with run-down farm implements and broken-down farmers. And the population that isn’t racist farmers are just racist whatevers.

Aw c’mon, Iowa. Jokes. Except you can legit probably find people who “lost two fingers in a chainsaw” and there’s legit nothing to do there except “go downtown and watch haircuts.” Plus my town had a legit Squealer Feed Store and a restaurant called “The Feed Bag” until it burned to the ground. McCall knows his (their) shit.

MAPPING IT

Audubon is actually in SW Iowa - considerably more Dust Bowl, considerably west of metros Deez Moinz and Iowa City. So it’s probably the canonical description of most of Iowa - more than, say, “Iowa City” by Eleni Mandell (also pretty great):

HEARING IT