Recorded by the author at The Mark Twain House & Museum, July 26, 2024
I.
Besides the steel-side red-stop | lies beer-wine left-off | by teens trashing cars or men leaving wives or something desperate. Besides chipped | curbed | stoned once a sidewalk—now a carport—where each car jumps over chips | curbs | stones. Besides the rubber against asphalt | horns against trucks (person against Hartford) — there is the shattering of glass that rolls in the breeze. (Besides filter car cool) there are hour late pickups that might have started with stories from a childhood ago.
II.
But the strobe light on the back wall broke— so someone left their flash on to avoid the toes | needles | runways. But the mixtape stoped mixing two hours ago— now it scratches from track | to bad track | to damn my ears are screeching. But the girl against the table just ran (from getting found | from running to florida to hide | from the ex who hung her out the window | from claiming the little me in her stomach as his.) But the tequila that left gasoline—used to fill his rusted red truck—in her nose sloshes onto her fingers.
III.
Or it was always the sharp-rotten of vodka-valerie into breathalyzers | weed hotboxed out of the bathroom window (hands chafing against cuffs.) Or the breeze against red-rounded cheeks star-swirling heads moss-mounted feet (that lost feeling fifty minutes ago.) Or maybe birds sound off in your head—not the night sky filled with crickets—diluted by the jump into the pool (then through the pool table.) Or the tongue-taste of fresh-air | fresh-beer | fresh-kiss | fresh-water | freshly-numbed.
IV.
And the smell of beer/tequila/vodka settled in the back of heads even (as filter car cool) sent it back. And walled out by faux glass—that broke once when it was real—now lets the sickly sweet | and grandpa’s yelling through the bedroom door | sneak into nooks and crannies and sort-of-fuzzy the slight-dip and crinkle of its sideway-highway tilt. And its memories of when sort-of-fuzzy hands | grips too tight | too loose. And once solo-red plastic-piling on shelves (only to be sun-stained and sun-laid to rest.)