In the line there is a cat wearing
a black leather vest, Confederate flag
stitched high on his shoulders, a pentangle
filled with stars right below it, PATRIOT RIDERS
embroidered in a delicate script. He has a bright
shard of silver in his left ear, a handlebar mustache to match,
and he and the dude working the register are
both laughing their asses off at this
girl that was in right before.
Bro. Register is a young fella with
sharp-looking inch-long dreads and a
gold grill only on his bottom teeth.
Tears are shuddering out both their eyes,
His and the Patriot Rider’s,
at the girl with the black leather skirt,
the stars carved into her mini-fro,
and the bulge in her black leather skirt.
The guy behind me in line is
not from around here, he’s wearing a cowboy hat
and clean-shaven at midnight.
Not that we don’t have clean-shaven cowboys
strutting around at midnight in Jackson,
but the Dixie National is in town,
and this guy was staring at the girl
with the stars in her hair
and the bulge in her black leather skirt
and sweat was just jumping up on his forehead and
you knew he was from out of town.
Probably Copiah County, or Lincoln, or
someplace where there are not girls who are
not girls
with black leather bulges
and he’s still trying to figure out what to feel.
Truth be told, without that
crazy hair-do and that
black leather bulge she was
pretty goddamn fine, which is why
Lincoln County over there is sweating, in his
Acme Boots and his new-blocked felt.
Behind him is a woman with
black Bible verses inked on her neck,
Kevlar kneepads, Kawasaki elbowguards
and a crewcut like one I had during
my eight and ninth summers.
There is a pretty girl with long brown hair who
is nuzzled up under her shoulder, a pretty girl in a
denim jacket and black blue jeans, shivering
in the February air,
And two more cowboys behind her. This is what we
get on a weekend, as
six new tens buzz in the parking lot, and the cops
laugh in the doorway.
I am still waiting, my hands turning to ice,
as four Latino boys strut in, all five-foot five of them,
singing their Saturday night song.
Eef there’s a buzzle in yer
hedgeroh
don bee alarmin
iz just a spreen kleen
for the maykween
And I smile so damn hard my jaws begin
to ache. Shit, I remember a buddy of mine
in high school who could play some
Zeppelin on acoustic guitar, the stuff
you really need to know how to play if you’re
going to pick up any girls—the intro to “Stairway,”
all the pretty bits of “Over the Hills and Far Away,” a
homecooked version of “Ramble On.”
We’d sit around at parties and he’d strum away
at this lousy pawn shop Gibson,
you would think he was Jimmy Page,
you’d think he was Robert Johnson.
(His girlfriend shot herself in the stomach when
she was sixteen,
shot herself in the stomach
while they were on the phone,
Because he wouldn’t come
pick her up from her momma’s house,
shot herself in the stomach)
“Is this it?” says Bro. Register to me
when it’s my turn at the counter,
“No smokes, no six-pack, just this?”
Shit, dude, I laugh
what you want from me, I’m old,
and he says
It is Saturday night, my friend—I want you to get drunk,
and if this does it, these two Sparks,
you need to run after the fella in the skirt, and
ask her
for a date.
That’s a hell of a birthday night. I loved reading this—and I get a kick out of imagining what happens when the Dixie National crowd spills into downtown Jackson once they shut the lights out on their cardboard-thin version of the Old West, brought to you by Dodge and Skoal.