"American Merchandise"

You wake to hear hurtling through the night sky freight cars,
missiles, helicopters, diesels bearing their precious
burdens!—each house on Cedar Avenue fully stocked but
there's always room for more. Rafters squeezed high,
windows
opaque with goods, price tags carefully peeled away. This is
the land of birthdays. From the pulpit smiles of perfect white
teeth—Do you pledge allegiance?—fitted to every mouth.
Frank squat friendly Westinghouse refrigerator in the kitchen,
food in cubic inches, power throbbing in the VHS VCR
and that
quivering code of antennae on the roof. Kelvinator
GE IBM
G & W Buick Electra and Dow Chemical and Polaris
under the
Christmas boughs—The impossible in art, says Oscar Wilde, is
what has happened in "real" life. A striped plastic tie for
Father he slips around his neck his expression unreadable but
his. And Mother lost in ecstasy amid the kitchen's secrets,
having memorized every dial, button, lever, slot. The word
processor is processing these words even as your lips shape
them, and on tape in the TV the President and your Cedar
Avenue neighbors welcome you to wherever this is. No other
place for you if we've read you right! Even now the great
diesels are headed in your direction.

—Joyce Carol Oates
from The Time Traveler: Poems