Stacy Lynn Mar (United States)

The street is a maze of folks
Happy to see the summer fading,
They are ankle deep in small town celebration,
Feet giddy with the smell of corn dogs and caramel apples,
Some are forever, some are just passing by.

The bigot on the corner and his plastic wife
Hand me a brochure stamped “vote for senator, ”
I flip it open to spill it’s red-lettered contents
Of anti-abortion and pro-religion discrimination.
I quickly dropp it into my pocket,
It’s contents burning my fingers
The way bile burns the esophagus.

Then there’s the preacher on the curbside,
His pockets full of the poor peoples pennies.
Like a clairvoyant he assembles the crowds,
God’s word spilling from his lips,
Big black book between his hands,
And a chip on his shoulder as he ogles
The ass of some female passersby.

The blacktop is screaming of footsteps,
How the voices patter to the ground like
Rain on a hot ten roof, they are inaudible
Beneath the hot whir of a Kentuckian breeze.

The people that suffocate the silence are but colors,
Faces fading into a kaleidoscope of sundown.

I imagine miles away, men who work the fields
Are stalling quickly on their tractors,
Straw hats bent inward of the heat,
And cigars between their sweaty lips as they
Saddle up the ruminants of a days hard work
And stomp their steel-toed boots home
To ram-shackled farmhouses and
Pretty wives in ancient, flower-print aprons.

The evening crowd shifts as
Early-risers vacate the streets.
A man at a roadside sell grips a microphone,
Blasphemy fills the air and dollar bills
Fall from pockets like dog food into a kennel.

All around me, life unfolds.
An old lady in a halo of gray,
Eyes hooded of age, offers me a cookbook
With the promise that all proceeds
Go to the Third Church of Christ.

A young couple sit entwined atop a picnic table,
His head burrowed into her neck,
Her hand fishing down his pants.
I remember those days of love,
Love as ripe as plump summer squash,
Hard on the outside but melting between my teeth.

Nightfall pulls his shade atop the fading action.
Somewhere in the distance
I hear the strum of guitar strings,
Soon bluegrass music is dancing in my hair,
My feet moving quickly, in chase of the fading day.

Just like yesterday, never quite catching up
With the days that spend themselves in a whim,
Leaving me an x-marked calendar
And memories that spin beneath my brain
Like the Ferris wheel lights that
Swirl a hypnotic pattern on the distant horizon.