Snake-Faced Mornings Driving the Dump Truck in the Blue Zone
by Michael Catherwood


garbage can juice
smoky plastic blinds
piled up on the sidewalk
blood under an old trestle bridge
graffiti the only positive color
parking lots filled with mattresses
broken baby cribs
used condoms and baby shoes
someone raked into a pile
scattered bricks and plywood
in the weeded lots
dead animals decomposing
tossed salads of grime
collect on the sidewalk

an empty driveway leads up
to where the house would be
everything bulldozed to gravel
a spray-painted address on the sidewalk
weeds high as dogwood
fish guts and shoelaces
and beer cans and wine bottles
and deadly Night Train
pickle jars baby photos sadness
and angry mosquitoes
the air thick as moist towels
we grind slowly like snakes
around the corner
head into an alley
and open our Thermoses





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