by Maria Spelleri
Isotopic sand from Trinity radiates in my shoes and
suddenly I remember cancer runs in my family.
Nothing good can come from trapping gluons
between my toes- there’ll be shriveling, disengagement,
and on top of that now karma’s gunning for me too,
thanks to the bugs, their colossal juiciness,
(attributed to secret nuclear testing),
macabre colliding particles,
smacking out taunts on my windshield “goes ’round, comes ’round, goes ’round comes
’round.”
Of course in these parts they must suspect something,
with the tremors and occasional two-headed calf
which never lives long although
a photo at the Arco showed one did make a decent road side attraction
over a long 4th of July weekend.
But now no one is slowing down long enough to get a look
at a Navajo John the Baptist, his faded sign warning
of the apocalypse,
still as a cigar store Indian and easy to miss
in the shade of a billboard reading
“Wal-Mart 2 miles north,”
apparently some sort of homing device ’cause every pickup veers toward
the off ramp, while on their sticky seats
bare-legged pregnant girls sip 64 oz. sodas and
shift uncomfortably with
the feeble kicks of their underweight babies, asking
the boys sitting next to them do you still love me even though
I’m ugly now, and the boys in damp undershirts check their rear views,
cough up some phlegm, and wonder if the recruiter
(who promised Germany or the Philippines),
got their proof of GED yet.
I know this, you see; it’s in
the fallout, the steady wind, the coppery taste in the back of my throat.
Meanwhile I feel my toes warming up, and like a hot air balloon
escaped from its mooring…..I rise,
arms straightening, hands releasing,
now just fingertips touching
lightly on the steering wheel….
Note to self: FOCUS.
Which I do- on the dividing line,
a wavering yellow tongue uncoiling from
deep within the mouth of iron-crusted mesas,
where scattered mobile homes jut rusted and
bleeding from the dust with the sudden asymmetry of
a meth addict’s smile. I punch the radio but
the distant ghost voice who promised salvation
has abandoned me to astral static, and
I try not to look at something dead
on the side of the road even though
it’s rather large.
Maria Spelleri teaches in the Language and Literature Department of the State College of Florida.