New Boss Same as the Old Boss

by Chris Bullard

Respectful cowboys, uniformed heroes,
cops better than the laws they enforce:
childhood archetypes we thought
we’d discarded like Halloween costumes,

return, power-washed and test-marketed,
circling through the grid, coaxing us
into familiar modes of settled defeat,
a hierarchy as comfortable as a sitcom.

Spin doctors photobombed the revolution.
We became nostalgic for order and industry,
contented with norms of destruction,
hallucinations that persist like forever plastics.