Expired Polaroid 600 film on Amite Street, Jackson, Miss. 2010.
This was a long time ago,
before I met you.
The Camino only had one speaker, a
busted six by nine
stuck to the back wall of the cab
like a magnet to a fridge.
One speaker means one channel, so
“Whole Lotta Love” loses its grandeur,
and the Germs are just vocals and drums,
no matter how new the cassette.
Hang on—
God, my keyboard
is just coated with dust, or
pollen, who can tell. They say the
pollen count this year is off the charts, the
pollen is worse than it has been in forever,
somebody told me at a party it’s because
we had so many cold snaps this year, everything
is just now blooming, the yards and
trees and medians exploding
all at once, nuclear azaleas
ahoy.
Lord knows my sinuses know the difference,
two weeks ago I figured on going to MEA, that I had
bronchitis or some shit, I could barely breathe, whatever
it is that bronchitis does to you. So
Nyquil to sleep and
two handkerchiefs to get through the day, my
left pants pocket stuffed full of snot-soaked
cotton and eight gigs of Cupertino plastic.
I should quit leaving the doors open at night, but
the weather is so nice outside, Jay says it’s
SNO, So Nice Outside, it’s txtspk for
we’re on the porch, and
this year has been so hard but the clouds in April are lovely and dusted up high and fine
like a pile of sugar on your grandmother’s kitchen counter, if your grandmother was
of the type and inclination to make cookies from flour and butter and piles of
sugar dusted up high and fine like Mississippi April cumulus or romulus or
whatever they’re called, and
I never thought I’d be
thankful for Spring Forward but
I’d rather grit my teeth in the daylight
than shudder at night.
And I’ve been typing this with a Number Two
Pure Red Sable Round brush in my mouth, it’s
drying from painting an X on a Polaroid and
no, I can’t quite explain why that was going
down but it’s the old one Exene used to
draw on her things and I guess I drew it on
my jacket a dozen years back and sometimes
it just makes me feel better to
trace those lovely calligraphic swoops and
swirls and curves, like tenth grade French, loverly
and dusted up
high and fine like an April cloud,
like a pile of sugar on somebody’s grandmother’s
kitchen counter, even though that’s
not how my Nana did things, we just
had a cooky jar stuffed full of
magic from Piggly Wiggly, the boys
allowed to raid it at will, the girls
a slap on the hand to watch their weight,
even when they were just nine or eight.
The brush was in my mouth on the
way back to my desk when I thought
“This was a long time ago, before
I even met you, before I loved you,
even before I knew I could,” because
I was at the Shell on Lakeland today
and this older fella was in a maroon
El Camino, with the windows down, and
I said “that’s a seventy-two, right?”, which of
course it was, just like mine and he said
“damn straight,” which of course he did,
and we got to talking about how long it
took him to get the body back together, and
the type of flake paint he used when the
Bondo and sanding and the welds all cooled.
He was real nice but his girlfriend or wife
she wouldn’t even look me in the eyes, I
knew the look she didn’t give me because
I’ve felt it sitting in the driver’s seat myself, she’s
already pissed she’s sitting on the vinyl seats
of his midlife crisis, already sweating on cracked
black seats, no a/c, even though it’s
just now April and the clouds are high and fine.
So I was thinking about El Caminos and
riding with the windows down on a fine April day
and walking through the house
with a sable brush in my mouth, and
how I wished I had a cooky jar filled with
Chips Ahoy and macaroons
from the last potluck
at Sandusky Baptist.