Defective products everywhere.
I stepped on one while walking
across the grass that grows like hair,
where lovers were sitting talking

about the money they’d make
by selling defective products.
Anyway, it wasn't a snake
or a squirrel or a pair of ducks

mating, it was an escalator
coming up out of the ground
from Hell, like the old dumb-waiter
in the haunted house around

the riverbend, that used to be
run up and down in the old days,
until the Yankees came and we
each dug a few graves

for the bodies that belonged to
the souls that returned to Hades
after the war. It caught my shoe
and jammed -- ****** and defectively made.