Warren Falcon (04/23/52 - xxxx / Spartanburg, South Carolina, USA)

You see them all morning while driving,
broken cars, omens, those towns you drive
through graveyards now. Your one good
tooth a headache, windshield wipers break in
the storm. Road side glass cuts your feet.
You curse your shoes in the back seat,
fumble with blades in the rain.

One good town out of six and that's the one
you leave behind where your shorts hang content
at home on the line, back yard neighbors
speculating over lingerie with black lace.
The sun can barely contain itself.
The mail man wishes he was me.

The story is Jalise - I was nearby - she dripped in
soaked from rain announcing, 'I need to get
out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.'
For me? only a towel to dry her and nothing more.

I swear, Jalise, pornographic peekaboo, hide
and seek, I'm drunk again thinking of you,
how I cut my baby teeth on Stillborn glass,
feet bleeding on always wet roads. One mile
out of two I'm thinking of you, how you wouldn't
let me love you, just hold your hips in jeans,
'just friends'. Your black lace is still a pain.
Five men out of six would call you 'b*tch' or worse.

At the laundromat now a woman in nylons stoops.
I drive by with a wave, another town, same storm,
a study in shields and blades wondering about
nylon mysteries, hand washed, bent woman's
name turning over and over again in spin and
dry cycles of drink.