THE MOONLIGHT HITCHHIKER
I came to light at Rome, Georgia August 10, 1963 in a mint Cadillac my mama’d sprung, hot from the car lot, ’cause she said she knowed I’d grow up with nothing but breakneck fists and a roofless point of view to my name. Shit yes, beside her friend Maxine, she ripped hell-bent past Del Martin’s crew of failed salesmen, out from that sinking dealership, and down backroads by the dozen, halfway through cricket-crazy Dixie–– till she spun into a ditch waving milkweed, and gave birth pure and simple among the furry seeds. Steaming like a catfish in the moonlight, I flopped around that flashy plastic seat and bawled for all the world, she said, like some god with a heart. Same year Del was shot folding his socks at a filthy laundromat in Santa Fe, I got elected to dish out chicken and deep-fried clam sandwiches over the counter––with shakers ranged like watchtowers–– before many a pipsqueak, white-haired genius into leather and contempt for everybody outside his crowd of ghosts. Oh, the Haight was black-and-blue heaven to any earthbound fool so hot under his haircut, doped-up and desolate, that no way could he guess his spark was going in a flash to a lump like sooty slag–– what future we had all those days leapt right up our noses! So help me weeping J.C., next thing I knew I was reborn about two thousand years more dead than alive when the world jerked to a stop ’round the middle of the night and nowhere and said to get me and my best threads off the damn bus. Somehow the wind, rustling widely at random through wheat fields, come across as a heaved breath, half from relief and half sharp regret for not a few whack-witted gestures which––via decades and detours––had thrashed my way to the turf by this godforsaken crossroads motel. With a headache in every direction and the high-flown moon that takes a dim view of me through mist adrift over from the bottom, I stumbled to an off-stride halt. But that’s how it goes––a whole life lost among clouds––then, oh Mama, brought down to this hard place, eating dirt right under my nosedive! So after you made the bend, Mister, I flagged your old Caddy for just one more ride like I still had somewheres on earth to go. for Larry Moffi c2016 by Jeff Grinnell originally published in a slightly different form by The Evansville Review
AFTER THE STREETLIGHT CAME ON
“Mother, where did you go?” a boy complains. “Your face . . . it fell when you rushed out my door.” Motes of shadow cascade interior walls, sweeping over his bed to the floor. How could she leave? (Just then his ear had homed in on steps diminishing down the hall.) He braces to roll his bath-robed weight her way but mounting shadows hold him still. “So cool off my brow . . . with hands numbed by wind . . . and tell what snow-forts near the woods, got buried!” Bright flakes go whirling outside his sill where backlit aloe and snake-plants loom. “Mother, where are you? . . .” Behind glazed eyes, he crawls through a blanket that thickens mote by mote. And she turns to him, far-off, with wavering face before the veils of snowfall close. c2016 by Jeff Grinnell