21
Three poems by robert walicki
site of a future
In the blackness, Targets and Walmarts are still skeletons,
stripped down husks of rusted steel, ripped plastic roofs
that drift like apparitions.
Cruel wind at 7am hits you, as you watch foremen wander
in muddy fog, the smoke they cough out. You take a minute to stare
at two trees, mountains of fill, The future sight of the snack bar
or layaway department. You stagger around in flannel, three days
of dirty denim by chained together tools and wait for the coffee to work.
But here, instead of full sun, you get florescent light.
You get a paint splattered light screaming Ozzy’s crazy train,
Hendrix’s haze,
rabbit holes of reverb. Theme music for your life, as your boss sweats
out a fifth of jack, snaps a chalk line out for you.
“This is the center of your pipe”, he says and “Don’t fuck it up this time”.
And all you can do is stand in this trenched earth, as the metal mouth
swings inches past your face, digs a hole big enough for a body
and 4 inches of pipe. “Shit flows downhill”, he says, which means,
it doesn’t get any lower than you. It means hold your breath
when the river of waste breaks through a clog,
the swill of noxious death gathering at your feet—primordial muck
of used condom, thousands of intestinal blockages
free at last. I learned from a veteran how to survive.
Rub Vicks Vaporub right above your lips. Double up on your gloves
and just don’t think about it.