They have two noses; six eyes in the arch of each foot.
They never tire of blinking down at the Americans—
our surfboards, machine guns, our dancing hamsters.
The way we shower every day, then rub more oil into our skin.
One notes There is no end to the number of things
they can hydrogenate. One checks the spaces in bubble wrap

to see if we store useful things inside. Every April
two men create a thing; then the fruit flies start dying.
By each November one man has a button, and four thousand men
have the job of making sure he does not push the button.
One notes There is no end to the number of buttons.

One visits a hundred random bedrooms. His third ear
records that Oh, God is still popular. He notes a rise
in couples sleeping side by side, holding hands tightly.
He calls this the Red Rover, Red Rover Position.
Four are assigned to the homeless and ten to schoolteachers,
who tend to jump from bridges more often. The one

in charge of soldiers sketches the long beard of Mr. Maupin,
who swore he wouldn't shave until his son came home.
Mr. Maupin sleeps in a blue recliner, still in his fishing vest:
one pocket stuffed with lures, the other with laminated
baseball cards of his son Matt's face. The backsides
show an angel, all cookie-cutter wings and halo,

yellow ribbons for hair. She declares Not one left behind.
The angel sighs and goes to sip whiskey with the angel
of telemarketers. Every night they watch lights dance
across thousands of blue screens as if, they note, constellations.
Every night they listen to the click of our million keyboards,
toasting the sound American souls make as they collide.