Pit Stop

Always surreal mirrors of the city town or outskirts they inhabit
selling fishing tackle night crawlers flies
racks of music on audio cassette or eight-track
or Mexican ice.

Curiously odorless despite eight coffee dispensers
rotating warmers lined with spitting split-end hot dogs and grease
wobbling nacho cheese screaming heartburn and Yellow Christ

White display rack a hundred eyes as it spins, flash and avert
flash and avert, the staples amber and blue smoked lenses
purple Lennon specs fool’s gold rock-tumbled gemstones
aviator shades unsubtle anonymity favored by men
who offer rides to the jail-bait in the parking lot

Unlikely Madonna in an oasis of fumes
trying to convince somebody to buy her a pack of smokes
and a six-pack, her love affair with chemicals barely begun
bleached hair draped over one lovely shoulder, Camel filter legs
skinny smooth and honey-brown

Truck stop laundries, back-room cafes where road-weary men
stalk lot lizards, and lot lizards are drawn like hot horses
to a cool drink, bending their corded necks.

The light level is always exactly the same, glaring,
and one man up from Jacksonville. Before that, Atlanta.
Before that, Hattiesburg. Passing 300,000 miles once, twice

After that, you stop counting.

He’s got a long trek back empty, unless
he can pick up a load in Fort Smith or Shreveport.
He inspects the Styrofoam-brimmed mesh ballcaps clipped to a clothesline.
The kind that will melt if you get ashes on them.

He buys one and goes back out to his rig, discarding his old cap
brown with sweat and dust among the taquito wrappers and
unlucky scratch-offs. His handle is Bronco Fan.
He sleeps on a bed in the back of his truck.

On pump six, somebody withdraws the pump from their tank
and gas spills on their shoes.