The Wait

your shadow fidgets
under yellow streetlamps, waiting
as the red taurus squeaks by
and parks up the street,
just beyond the old train station

as usual:
a figure emerges from the car
large and hunched and impatient,

he begins tossing crack and porn
from his trunk in a rush

your shadow watches and waits,
and when the man and his car
are gone, you rush in
to devour the goods

+++

you wait every night by the station
in a canopy of an overcoat
feet attached to your shadow
unable to wake yourself up

My Side of Town

I.
I live on the corner of Wise and Jolly Roads, couched into the Southwest side of Lansing, Michigan. In my estimation there aren’t too many people who are wise and jolly around here.

II.
The CVS down the street was robbed last night. The guy on the security camera looks like my neighbor a few houses away. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t him. I’m scared of that guy. He’s about eight feet tall and he walks like he can’t wait to kick some innocent fool in the nuts. Sometimes he cuts through my yard and peeks in the windows. I hide my laptop at night.

III.
The assistant principal at the middle school by Cedar Street blew his gasket last year and murdered his ex-girlfriend’s boyfriend and brother at a Christmas party. I used to teach at that school. I actually went out for drinks with him and a couple other teachers a time or two. He seemed normal enough. Shit, was I wrong.

IV.
There’s a guy who rides by every sunset on a broken-down Schwinn with wire basket tied to it. He’s always yelling at the top of his lungs about how his woman wronged him, how he has no place to go if she’s gonna kick him out, and so on. We call him the Broken Record.

V.
There’s a haze over the neighborhood every year around the Fourth of July. Store bought fireworks from the market, illegals from Indiana, and homemade bombs blow out so much smoke that some of us here call it Baghdad 1991. We have to close the windows or risk lung damage, and we don’t have air conditioning.