Lena, across the street
on her porch step clutching
her robe closed against the afternoon sun.
ashtrays neat
stacked full of half smoked Kents.
in her bedroom
a real live slot machine
sprayed nickles when you never won.
Lena’s buoyancy declined
absent my mom floating
her tab
at the China Inn
Kim, across the street
who spit and kissed and
let me ride her dirt bike exactly once.
fatass. go help your mother unpack.
Name’s not fatass, Booby.
Nu-Dad Bobby black & white,
western arrow piping.
bobby black mustache,
ring finger missing,
like Aunt Belinda and
her little Datsun 280 z,
burnt orange dot fading
in the pale horizon.
Bobby blackish blue bird breast oil chest hair
showed teeth on stage
with Marty Robbins
out in the west Texas town of El Paso
where we never saw Belinda again.
