Somewhere between Geyer Springs Road
and Robinson Auditorium I left the earth
for a place where red lights turned green
and Die Fledermaus and The Knack’s
“My Sharona” fused into a teen-aged rat
whose skin peeled off his fingers from
the night before’s burning. But this end
of the story came late after Sunday’s
12-hour shift and the deep well of dead
air in my mind when the assistant manager,
Debra, left the receipts to find me standing
at the fryer like it was the three-compartment
sink and I casually rinsed my hands in
the filtering grease like a spigot I thought
poured out before me. Fortunately,
the flames were out and the heat now half
its four hundred fifty degrees, but my swelling
hands still stung and blistered while the cold
water and soap she rinsed them with cut
the grease and left me with two pink clubs.
I had the next night off, a school night
with tickets to the Arkansas Symphony
Orchestra and extra credit, but Debra
said her husband had something special
and I figured both were possible if I left
early enough. Sometimes special is
an understatement, and after three bowls
driven deep with a shot of nitrous oxide
to propel me beyond the edge of their
fake ferns and real plants, the music
in the background like Technicolor
wallpaper, her hair brushing over my
shoulder on the leather couch, his hands
clapping to the beat of his laughter when
he realized they still had some acid left
somewhere in the bedroom, I remembered
my second engagement and saw where
this was going, saw a place I’d never leave
if I wandered onto that hypnotic stage,
a night I wouldn’t find my way home.
Photo By: egazelle
