Exit Now
An historic marker
and tombstones grow fluorescent
on the roadside, stern billboards
lit by the glaring video store.
The drive-thru girl flirts
with two weeks notice—a boy
who’s never shaved wants
to save her from the Dairy Queen.
Pages from Bible coloring books
tint the windows of Sunday school,
thorns and scourging softened
with crayon and manila.
The Rock and Bowl marquee
says 9/11—we will never forget
Saturday is 2 for 1.
Most everyone is in before dark,
unaffected by this virulent Spring,
a muffled detonation of lust and pollen.
Others go into the night
elated or circumspect,
drawn by April’s chilled nectar,
warm sidewalks, a nodding flagpole.
From the highway, sodium vapor glows.
Maybe this will be the night
things begin to change.
One car in three hours,
the exit ramp is a narrow hope.
Then a long, steel glimmer and exhausted roar.
A dual row of heads,
dwarfed and hazy
in the broad glass of a Greyhound.
The Weight of Addition, Mutabilis Press, Houston, 2007
An historic marker
and tombstones grow fluorescent
on the roadside, stern billboards
lit by the glaring video store.
The drive-thru girl flirts
with two weeks notice—a boy
who’s never shaved wants
to save her from the Dairy Queen.
Pages from Bible coloring books
tint the windows of Sunday school,
thorns and scourging softened
with crayon and manila.
The Rock and Bowl marquee
says 9/11—we will never forget
Saturday is 2 for 1.
Most everyone is in before dark,
unaffected by this virulent Spring,
a muffled detonation of lust and pollen.
Others go into the night
elated or circumspect,
drawn by April’s chilled nectar,
warm sidewalks, a nodding flagpole.
From the highway, sodium vapor glows.
Maybe this will be the night
things begin to change.
One car in three hours,
the exit ramp is a narrow hope.
Then a long, steel glimmer and exhausted roar.
A dual row of heads,
dwarfed and hazy
in the broad glass of a Greyhound.
The Weight of Addition, Mutabilis Press, Houston, 2007
