Monday, January 7, 2019

The 18


            {one}

Preston Highway is hard and yellow brown, an
Ohio Valley temperature inversion parks the stink
on top the Watterson overpass  leaden clouds coating the lungs
of the proletariat lumpen and otherwise lining up aside the road
            waiting for the 18

churches and check cashing joints
suicide lane running all the way down to the Snyder

the 18 runs down Preston every 15 minutes
eight, nine, noon, four, five, six, nine-thirty

the wrong 18 dumps you out short of Outer Loop
at the Cash America on Ulrich
in the sun or rain or snow or pure cold or unbearable heat,
whatever the fuck is dealt on that asphalt strip
its never as bad as it can be  but its always worse
than it should be

            {two}

Mexican places for whites  Mexican places for Mexicans
bare tube fluorescent gold-flecked white formica and Tecaté
whites point at the menu in the Mexican Mexican joints
Mexican white places have secret menus &
seat all the Latins under curved glass at the front of
  the converted Wendys

bus stop, hammered wet cigarette tar, poison
fumes from busted catalytic converters

broken cars making the right off Outer Loop
accelerating up Preston in a trail of stink

late, catching the 18 with the stragglers
they’re not turning off the blue lights, obviously
pull knit cap down over burnt eyes  up to Eastern Parkway
the 18, then a mile home

            {three}

drunk and killing things with punk rock, pulling
on a Tecaté 24 running up Preston in the dank night
up about where Indian Trail slashes across oily dark
swimming across broken asphalt  dirt you feel as much as see
  breathing chunked petroleum
  sloughing off strip malls 
           

{four}

perhaps not dark so much as light at crazed angles
as negative light  always people crossing the street
in the dark you don’t see them just sort of hanging out
there in the double turn lane  Mexicans Africans
Koreans Whites about half dragging strollers
the prole lumpen and otherwise defying death
hanging on the edge of the broken asphalt river

            {five}

all it is is
you wake up in
the morning
and find yourself
back out on Preston
fucked

2 comments:

  1. Thanks! You've probably seen it in different incarnations. Finishing up a small poetry zine (chapbook?) and I was never happy with it even if it still held my interest. Did a chop job on it yesterday, the new rhythms help it out enough for me to be ok with it again. Not going to update this blog post, but I've added an epigraph from ZZ Top: "Have mercy / been waitin' for the bus all day".

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