Driving Across Indiana on One Tank of Gas

I am inhaling the first cigarette of my new pack

smelling the striking copper handle of the gas

pump still on my hand as

the brittle air pours through the wide-open window of my mother’s car.

Indiana looks like a moon,

wholly other-worldly just out of rifle-range.

Hoosiers: big up and down

ball if you’re not familiar. Skinny draws, gorges

fall off to the right side of the road.

A man with an Asian wife pulls up in a white mini-van.

She gets out to pee, accidently leaving

the door open.

The man lets the door stand ajar.

He is focused, rubbing a pale-ringed knuckle

and staring at the decapitated field.

He reaches into her heart-

shaped purse

in the driver’s seat.

And finds a candy bar in there.

She’s coming back now,

hustling over

the frozen-black-muck, smiling at him

in her little-pink-jacket.

He opens his door

and eats the entire thing down

in bewilderment.

I.D.'s

In the fall everyone from the DMV is beset with definite ideas. Like Colombina who hides chicken feet between stacks of paper around her desk. And Rick the cashier who refuses to give out one dollar bills. Jones, balding and losing his lower lip, was fired for wearing a Hawaiian shirt every day and lying about it.

“This isn’t a Hawaiian shirt,” he would say.

Jones worked next to Todd for three years and usually confided in him that the office was hot. When they moved Todd away from Jones, Jones would walk up to Todd’s desk sweating and say, “Pal, it’s hot in here.”

The boss, Bob, had that skin disease that makes people white and black and splotchy at the same time. During the fall he looked yellow. Jones mimicked him and everyone else. Eventually Bob brought him into his office. “Jones, I think you’re dangerous,” Bob said. Jones leaned back in his seat and was quiet a long time. He put an open palm on the desk and made a little turkey out of sweat.

      “Bob, I honestly think you’re dangerous,” he replied

Bob looked through the blinds. “You’re fired.”

“It’s Friday.”

      “Sorry pal.” It was Tuesday.

The next day Jones showed up in a grey dress and sunglasses and sat in the waiting area until the police came. He tried whispering something to Todd on the way out, but he was being handcuffed and Todd couldn’t hear him. As Jones' wigged-head was being lowered into the police cruiser, a gust of wind blew the front door open. Todd’s bowl-cut flew to the ceiling and a bird landed on the entryway. Todd screamed, "Fall has a welcome sensation!" Bob watched the winged little wretch and wished it would join the long line of impatient customers, but the door was slowly being pulled shut by the opposite end of the same force that blew it open and the bird was careening away on a 45-degree angle. Bob felt like a dinosaur for watching birds in such a way, and Todd lowered his head darkly for a moment, feeling like he'd just lost something preciously vital, but he couldn't figure out what it was. Then the moment snapped shut. Columbina reshuffled some papers over her chicken's feet. It was winter again.

In the spring Todd was replaced by Wayne. Wayne started an office pool; he pooled all the money.  He was always thinking up ideas for the pool. He gambled a lot and started talking about gambling all the time—even on first dates. “You can even smoke inside the Indian casinos,” he would say.

He looked at me once and noticed my glasses had changed. His face fogged over and his eyes dribbled out the window. “I’m hungry,” he said. 

In the summer Deborah walked in on Wayne bathing in the women’s bathroom. He suggested that Grand Cahokia was better than Pottawatomie and put a handful of soap in his pubic hair. Bob didn't fire him, but by September he was invisible; in December pencils on his desk sat like trees in snow.

Positive

That was a nice thing

a rill a piccolo sing

a gaff a fall a laugh

Coming out of my phone

There's no struggle in this

Thing

And it was

Today tomorrow brings unspeakable

Happiness if you let it.

A shoe drops

From a toe if you

let it.

Civil War

I killed where you wanted: Culp’s Ridge, a grove of peaches at Gettysburg, the Spotsylvania courthouse—such an undeserved plot for tens of thousands to cross over and over their last gullies down with one leg and shrapnel wounds. Country means something else, from inside a leaky courthouse, when America is warring with itself. Pittsburgh balls zip over heads in an embankment. When a brave one goes over he drops first—a steel town—miles and miles away. Then another: a mill in Ohio falling with a wife and her mud bricks. In Tennessee a mother sways and counts the men running through the fog while the possums under the porch play raccoon.

But now they say, We're sorry...But we won, and anyways: you’re welcome. Don't you see

How comfortable you are? Didn't you hear me fight? That was for you. And plus we made a special bridge for you, and it's made of lights.

Fuck that, I'd say. Get a rifle, sit on a hill and wait. They'll be waiting too, and when they turn the lights off, start firing. You won't hit them all, but remember: the bullets that miss will fly around the world and land in your back—

You'll fall and they’ll dress you in a bright blue uniform, place you in a display case with a skinny white soldier who's dressed the same, and put on a parade. They'll take your rifle and tuck it in his arms. place your hand on his chest—rest your head on his shoulder. The caption below both your feet will read: 

This is how the war was won.

Sleeping

There’s a storm, an imaginary farmer 

Saying there’s rain tomorrow “Look at the moon,”

He says, and walks away Montana.

See,

Together is all over the face 

Because there’s two of them.

See my ears too listen to your hands sleeping with shivers gently

Rubbing your warring fingers like

I know everything

That will happen between them.

Get it right, this is no war.

The weather report is outside;

Happening is what’s here

And has nothing to contend with. 

If we might sleep all night

And never move our hands

For correspondence we’ll talk with words,

Or scribble in the margins of old notebook paper

That I will later jam

Into my typewriter

And send to you long distances

Over a pillow.