There's something too proper, too correct,
about that picket fence across the street,
too uniform, to un-wooden:
synthetic, ersatz.

It's made of metal.

Nobody, it seems, wants wood!
Wood splinters and rots.
Needs to be painted.
It's too ramshackle, too prone
to the ravages of weather.

This metal fence, as fake as Astroturf,
as white and strident as the piety of officeholders:
is this what suburbia has come to?

American innovation. State of the art.
And you never have to worry about termites.