Days

TOWARDS THE 1950s

Slush of peaches gone to rot by the dark road side
where they fell or were pelted by teenagers
gunning roadsters, jalopies, escaping the last reel.
Single blonde hair of the girl they wanted,
all of them with the flash of grease
in their pompadours, the flash of switchblades
they pulled from the leather jackets
in which they seethed for the sex of speed.
Froth of waves and grain of salt
from the altar of their fatalism,
the ocean, to which they’d go with bonfires.
Acrid tang of the rubber melted
in the accelerations of every death wish.
Vinyl record ground down
to peppered sound beneath the player’s needle.
Chorus of forgotten love song.
Eulogy for Jane Russell.
Storm of motorcycles
and stock footage of California’s arid nowhere.
Pathology of the sneer,
abortive fight broken apart by the old
dying just the same.
Random revenge. Biopsy of too small town.
Spill of blood on the road
already stained in oil
and wet with vulcanite rain.
Rubied smear of her last kiss.
Emptied cashmere, warp her breasts left,
fished from the ugly surf
but not her third act body pregnant with ruin.