above the beer

gazing out

as though from the top of a hickory fencepost

indifferent

back to me

shoulders humped like some old Ute

but no

it was only me

tripping again

on roads

long past

roads

I'd slammed the hammer down

one too many times

Mojado

Today, I feel exactly like a dark mojado on a freeway overpass. Black pack on my back, staring out over the streaming traffic; cars pouring under my wide blistered feet.

I'm turning slowly in one place, looking for some sign; some familiar tree, some rock. I'm turning full circle but nothing speaks to me.

Today, I feel exactly like this short Sonoran man searching for some distant cousin he's never met. They promised he'd be here with a job, cold cerveza, and tennis shoes. But he's nowhere to be found. He's nowhere around.

Normal

(Highway 39 South) Under the blaring neon of the drunk-tank lockup he studied the cinder-block walls. There was nothing much else to do. Arms slack between knees. Knees folded up to accommodate the short length of the cot. A weird light green plastic burlap-sack-type of mattress propped under his head. Remarkable absence of graffiti, he thought to himself as he scanned the contours. Someone had attempted some desperate scrapings on the steel frame of the window but there were no letters; no words of any kind. Not even a lover's name or a racial slur. No pictographs of genitalia even. Just random gashes into the steel. He wondered what type of sharp object could have been used since all personal possessions are confiscated long before they slam the door on you. Maybe a zipper. But how would anyone manage to get their crotch up that high to the window frame without being spotted through the thick glass by one of the zealous young officers in crew cuts. Whoever it was would have had to drop their jeans, he figured; stand on the rough ledge of the cot, pants in hand, and scrape away in fits and flurries, ducking frantically each time someone came patrolling down the corridor. Must have been a young man, he thought. Young, scared, and angry. Full of rage. He no longer had it in him, he realized. The fight. The hate. The energy. That was mainly it. Just exhaustion and dismay. He panned the walls, searching for some recognizable symbol of civilization. A crude five-pointed star fashioned with intersecting lines but not overtly Jewish. More like a token of achievement a fourth-grade teacher might scribble in the margin of your notebook. Next to it, a tall number 15 gashed at an angle with the tail of the 5 trailing off into a tropical bird feather. Beautiful but unintended. Beauty seemed more and more like that these days. Accidental. Miraculous, maybe. He kept scanning: another tangle of slashes that he read anthropomorphically into a stick-figure man with an oversize head, wielding an ax. It could have easily been something depicted on the ancient cave walls of France. A giant stag crashing to earth. Fires in the vast blackness. Log drums through the endless woods.

So

fact is

they ask me

who can you get

to wire you a hundred and fifty bucks

you need a hundred and fifty more

to complete your bond

I was at a loss

I said no one

no one

they said back

that's right I said

come on they said

you must have someone out there

no I said