What Have You Done

Published online with Wild Roof Journal, 2021

Clamoring into your Buick, your Ford,

your hunk of drab fiberglass and stained footing,

you set a gleeful course for somewhere once-mentioned,

somewhere once-photographed

and pasted to the edge of your mother’s headboard

with the foggy bloom of super glue

and the lonely mauve of waxy lipstick leftovers.

You bring your lovers, your brothers, your so-called-friends.

You picture them like deck boys, swabbing boys,

cabin boys,

all tousled hair and unwanted squawking

while you endure fifty-five, tease sixty, down the highway.

When you park and stretch your trembling legs,

when you first lay eyes on that postcard-place of childhood color,

the breath goes right out of you.

What have they done, what have they done,

with their lemon-lime-soda-can and their impish indiscretions?

The fields are parking lots, the parking lots are troughs,

troughs filled with bubblegum hills

and the glossy-dark stains of where-vomit-once-was.

What have they done, what have they done,

with their silly photograph-hopes and their colorless cars

just like yours.