Not a day old, I smelled the scent of diesel
on my father's fingertips—
the allure of pepperoni pizza
on both my parents' lips;
taught, my prayers were
secondary to Canadian bacon
with olives—I have been sketching
pitted fruits my whole life, truthfully,
I can’t draw much else.
His grey collar swooped in and out
from long distances to set routes twirling
on and along to mid-mgmt;
my kittens grew into cats.
On weekends, fumes tickled,
enveloping him, I, with the whir of snake
belts. In the lot, oil
spots framed my olfactory
tastes. Have you ever lingered
adjacent to diesel
wet from a summer rain?
Let the burn seep into the nostrils—
grease in notes tread the crust—
rumbles of hounds leave imprints—
no green peppers, please.
I, too, don the collar, grey
weaving through the same city streets—
squinting as my father once did
against the setting bulbs. Both
of us in transit to another
lot, but not before
learning to pop an air-
brake and have a Marlboro Light.
What seat to choose, in the dilly-dally
of moment? One might peruse
a head of hair or tint of melanin
found in an angle of sunbeams—the Pilot,
Flying J wants ya, too. Nuptials, mother... ;)))
we’ll get round to that—all is possible
from the telescopic views of the naïve
youth handling free souvenirs and broken
taillights. What was a female to me, then?
Her address, redirect—
an adage can I toss on this isometric
template of he and she, him and her?
They, us, wandering in a cramped abode—
a micro-Mamet—less violin and more
plastic xylophone, but not sticky;
this isn’t trashy. Our mix of tongues
misfires, sometimes, but a bus that keeps
its trundle finds articulation, a
glide on smooth texture; eventually,
our odometer goes kaput, yet
the kalidiscope is ours, we clutch it.
As a youth, the double yellow
lines never manifested in bold,
and my house, quaint--the only difference
between a neighborhood aquared and mine
were the dalliance of polygons.
Vinyl seats and a rabbit, volk
putt-putt along narrow roads
of wire smiles in sub-districts
washed up after a bushhogging
post-market, the flashflood
on gravel-grey graphs. Shelter
offered roots and cleared
the mustang grapes.
This was my first patch of earth—memories
quant and kibble, thus manifested
deep in caves as red oche.
Here, I found the warpaint
unknowing of the allotment, the station
to be folded neatly, placed
among knickknacks in shoeboxes.
I was; I am liminal— myBody aches
from climbing invisible trees.
yet, I'm still
a wide-eyed kitten clinging to the trunk.
Existential baby steps, cross.id
where vocalizations meet the dialect
labeled in the milage book, exit 360.
“This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article.”
A pump, rainbow green, liquidates mauve.
Wooden seat-beads filter
a breeze in aspirations. Poetry by the
routes, fragments of seagreen glass swept to the side—a
windshield framing color hex/es—
suns tucked beneath
blades of verdigris grass (exit 776)?
Motormen are encapsulated
in glaucous shirts. Comfy, generally
“This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article.”
made of cotton—fitting the dangle of belly,
the tire, formed by convenience, layovers:
fried potatoes—the shape, gömböc—
hands ready at the shiny black wheel,
the iodized salt melts, exit 888.
Bones rumple sideways
repeating old jokes to make the lumbar
feel-displaced in time;
no more revolutions from the wheel.
only micro-revelations in the fissures of the dash
bear on the slumps.
“This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article.”