It’s too big of a damn big city
for a dust bowl to even appear. Let alone
stick around for three months and turn the streets
into some kind of apocalyptic western where the riots
are surprisingly quiet in tone.

Six p.m.,
although God knows how anyone
could tell by looking outside.

Her car has been parked out front since four.
The class clown on the radio has been drinking
heavily since noon and playing Warren Zevon
since two-thirty. Since it’s Tuesday this isn’t anything
shocking. She overworks her poor speakers and mumbles
the lines that still haven’t gotten old.

That’s most of them. She sings along when appropriate
and opens the glove box to let the beautiful pocket watches
spill out onto the floor.
There’s twenty all in all. Each one may is the very best
of whichever sincere boy gave it to her
when things got hopeless and certain promises needed to be made.

For ages now she’s been meaning to get rid of them.
Sell the nicer models or just hand them all over
to some madman from off the streets who relates
to that rabbit from that book just a little too strongly.

But it’s nice to reach out and clutter history. It’s like an army of hands and shovels
arguing for composure and dignity at a burnt-down trailer park.

Everyone holds onto more than they should. Everyone would rather collect
bulky artifacts than deeply personal scraps of paper
with messy writing all over the place.
That’s where career drinkers come from. All they do is drink, weep
and learn to read what may as well be Vulcan.

Right now she’s just killing time.

In fifteen minutes, she’s going to drink a surprisingly large belt
of bourbon for a girl her size. Then she’s going to wait for the last song
to finish. Then she’s going to brave the visiting winds of Mars or Arizona to go
inside the last place in town that triples as a bar, a Laundromat and a comedy club.

The comedy club will be dangerously packed. The punk rock kid
in the wheelchair will be halfway into his set. The bar will be
choked with ambition, courage and persuasion.

The Laundromat will be empty except for the guy
she stabs in the stomach at this time every single day
of the nine-day week.

It’s a boring silent movie. Dullsville, North Dakota, baby doll.

He looks up, she moves forward.
He grins, she moves forward.
He winks, she gets the knife in just right.
He drops, she takes the money as he crumbles.

The first time was just a favor
to a friend and veteran of the unusual. The fact
that it became habit was as natural as shallow breathing.

It’s a ridiculous routine,
but the money is a straight line
from the equally ridiculous to the sublime.

Plus she imagines that one day
they’ll speak beforehand,
and that will have all the makings
of one of those enlightening conversations
she’s been dreaming about.

He might be a man of faith.
There’s something going on in those eyes of his.

12/03/2010

Posted on 12/03/2010
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