love’s travel stop
(sunday afternoon)
it’s already ninety degrees out
not even one in the afternoon
i curse the climate while taking a piss
in the men’s room at love’s travel stop
somewhere in pennsylvania
where every billboard on the turnpike is telling me
energy taxes are killing the working man
and that the bible is absolute, true and final
there’s a country music song playing
something about springsteen songs and lemonade stands
men on the moon and fireflies in june
the singer tells me that we don’t always get it right
but there’s nowhere he’d rather live than america
i’m glad that i don’t know the song
but there are a lot of men whistling to it
as they piss and wash their hands
back in the travel store people are in lines
paying for gas and buying cigarettes and snuff
i grab two bottles of unregulated water
owned by pepsi or coke
found in springs from out in drought-torn california
the country song is still playing
about high school proms and open arms on country farms
everyone in the love’s travel stop is white
except for one black dude
he’s wearing a blue chip in his ear
he’s got a big backpack on and is sweating profusely
he keeps asking everyone coming in and going out
how hot they think it is outside
i tell him it’s ninety
he says, it can’t be, it just can’t be
and starts pacing around the store cursing
i think maybe i should start getting worried about this
with the way things are going in america
but then it hits me that black people don’t usually kill in
bulk
the way us white people do
so i smile at the cashier who calls me honey
pay for my gas and the water
start singing the country song
in the same disney voice as the singer on the radio
go outside and drop fifteen fracking dollars into the tank
along with every other picture postcard yankee
blessed to be living here in one nation under god
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