Pretty Boy
Elisabetta CroceI was nine and watching that horse piss a
rum-colored lake into cratered dirt and
wondering how this oil tanker could have a
penis and if maybe god did too.
Southwest, a big animal, in the middle of
Arizona a flat-roofed diner like a sheetcake,
tin ceiling, eggs any way you like.
Greasewood: the quiet struggle of here.
I’m sure I had known vastness before
but this was the first time somewhere meant
it, those mountains a doorstop, open a
normal phenomenon, the blue space around
a hawk.
Hot backsplash, lick, spit, and wiping my
mouth with the back of my hand — I wanted
to take off my shirt. This big-bodied
machine, the only thing hotter than desert,
the only thing that makes dust rise.
Waffle Houses
Lily Lauveri.
this Ford Windstar pulls into
a hotel parking lot.
then there’s 4 tv channels and puking in the bathroom,
Days Inn house kept elevation sickness.
the hotel pillow smells like piss,
but nothing else is better.
ii.
out across the highway,
Sun flirts to the asphalt, and
Jesus billboards look like they mean it.
(All the Waffle Houses stink of sweetness.)
the mountains in the distance
are phobic of the foreground,
until, finally,
iii.
this minivan is risen
above a yellow valley
into scraggle rock and blue mist
(not seeing the fog, but in it).
