It got going when this sweet, unhappy man
crashed his 1974 dream machine into one of those stores
where people pretend to be rich enough
to buy nothing but soap.

He had been laughing nervously all day,
and they later found boxes and boxes of Japanese
wooden soup spoons in the backseat of his car.

No suitcase in the trunk. No bodies.

That store was never gonna recover, man.
The owner had wanted to crank up the PJ Harvey,
and feel like it wouldn’t be a big thing at all
to be passing through El Paso,
by the time the insurance investigation
said what it wanted to say.

But it was either the store,
understand,
or these dumb kids standing in the street,
trying to figure out which window
they were gonna break first.

They didn’t have an out of town education,
no sir,
but they had rocks, enthusiasm and not a shred
of doubt over not wanting to be Catholic ever again.

The sweet man’s angelic personal assistant
later called the crash a moment of clarity.

And the whole thing covered
this one poor boy’s hands in tobacco hands.

His plans for the day had been simple before the crash.
Sit in an Ethiopian buffet until the Chinese owner closed up,
pass a Pall Mall blue around his hands to feel accomplished,
and wait to see if that beautiful, violent boy from Tuesday
actually showed up this time.

Bits of cigarette paper were stuck to his right hand afterwards,
and he felt the dust from the ceiling in his hair
for a week afterward.

He didn’t get one of those spoons for his troubles,
and in a couple of months he fell in love
with an out-of-work DJ,
who wanted to go back home to Kansas City,
and start a rockabilly band in his uncle’s old house.

The DJ never showed up,
understand,
so he didn’t see the girl dressed like a Hitchcock spy
across the street.

She laughed at the whole disaster,
dropped her still-lit cigar in the only mailbox for two miles,
and forgot about her husband’s brother
for ten of the longest minutes on philosophical record.

Every kid she saw that was under seven
reminded her of how much she hated
being able to imagine ever possibility.

Police in La Crescenta found four wooden spoons
in a purse beside her body. And the phone number
of a fireman hundreds of miles away.

Her fingers were still wrinkled
from the revolting hotel swimming pool,
and one of the up-and-comers on the scene
wanted to do cartwheels over how quiet her lips looked.

He made plans for her that he never followed through on.

And yeah,
don’t worry.

The Ethiopian place is still there. The Chinese guy
heard “Hoochie Coochie Man” come on the radio again
yesterday, and thought once more that some people,
Jesus,
some people really have all the luck.

03/10/2013

Posted on 03/10/2013
Copyright © 2025 Gabriel Ricard