“i’ll do it myself daddy.”
even the grizzled
old truckers
withered gargoyles
who rarely speak
or move at all
while leaning over
their food.
even they smile
like peeled bananas
when my little boy
not even three years old
trudges across the
truck stop restaurant
dragging back
a high chair
twice
his size.
insufficient funds
the past few months
have been
more drinking
than writing
more malingering
and clock watching
and short-stick hustling
of every
judy garland
in every bar
up and down
ingersoll avenue
a blue fog autopilot
of jameson
and bud light
right up until
this afternoon
where
pale faced
rock gut
and hum of bone
i stare
at the screen
of the atm
which says:
insufficient funds:
dead broke:
the 3800$
i'd saved up
ran through
in eighty-six nights
like
defective puzzles.
sum-n wrong
sum-n wrong with
the sum-bitchn machine?
asks the old man
behind me
in a yellow billed hat
with a voice
not unlike
a long piece of
paper
torn in two.
an old song
the stillborn child
with his first wife
looks exactly
like the one and only daughter
born to his
second wife.
he's never
told his
second wife this.
sometimes he watches
his daughter
and his mind
sticks to the page:
what are you thinking about?
his wife will ask.
an old song,
is all he says.
Justin Hyde lives in Iowa. |
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