"Bright tumors, rooted in the dark"

White Trash

Now it's styrofoam pellets
that blow across the yard.
They settle in the new grass
like the eggs of Japanese toys.
It's a kind of modern snowing.

The boy next door opened a box,
took out the precious present
and shook these white spun plastic
droplets into the wind.
It's how his family thinks.

Hundred of them. Shaped like
unlucky fetuses or the brains
of TV stars.
Now they burrow in the lawn,
defy the rake, wriggle like the toes
of the shallow buried.

They'll all be there when we're gone.
Bright tumors, rooted in the dark.
Crowding the dirt. Nothing makes them
grow. But nothing kills them either.

-Jim Hall from The Made Thing: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern Poetry