Not a day old, I smelled the scent of diesel
on my father's fingertips.
And, the allure of pepperoni pizza
on both my parents' lips;
this taught me my prayers were
really secondary to Canadian bacon
with olives—I have been sketching
these 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 all gunked up
when it's wet from a summer rain?
Let the burn seep into the nostrils.
I, too, would don the collar, grey
weaving through the same city streets—
squinting as my father once did
against the setting bulb. Both
of us were in transit to another
profession, but not before
learning to pop an air
brake and have a Marlboro Light.