An Abandoned Project that cost me a July

This poem was written during the down-time at my summer job: serving Coke Zero to people wearing Mom-jeans and NASCAR hats at the Ruby Tuesday in Middletown Rhode Island. The most popular item was the "New Orleans Seafood" paired with a trip to our "Fresh Garden Bar "(added on for 2.99$). I spent a lot of time staring through the stained-cedar blinds that provided our guests a view of West Main Blvd. as the sun set over military housing. There was also an open field and a Bus-stop.

Ruby Tuesday

Everyone and June, the month
is ill and a gassy-happiness
bubbles from the bay shallows
like two young people
deciding they no longer loved each other
and that it was final
with the certainty that green worms
floating into your car
signify spring, and the reissue
of your various transcripts,
their own youth ghosting
like bags from K-Mart
billowing variously in middle aged trees.

In chain restaurants
guests distrust the salad bar
like a grandmother's rotten ladder
and their dyed-wild hair
angles sun-light like
fishermen wanted for tax evasion
"We will not be going back to Florida
until after the Fireworks."

Rhode Island's haze clots thickly
the strange glaucoma of the sinking states
a drugless mess
"everyone is so dry."
A blaring hive of undifferentiated nothingness
and nothing-masters.

Irrevrent pelicans would
have better luck lapping
off the docks of Gloucester
but there is too much green
and wind between them

the heat breaks with another rain
the fireworks are canceled

this once was an island

full of pink visions
these nine year olds in denim
dress legs pass over new weeds
in skinny ring
ashes, ashes, and everyone crashing
in front of a concert
that isn't going to write itself

A column of plague
dedicated to the roses
Pocked with youngness
the high flank of wintering thighs

this once was Massachusetts

when the skies were different
and 10 O'Clock fries inspire the first poem
in three weeks. Salt, pepper,
Barack Obama.

confederated stars in the
tall grass midnight
dreamy, salted fences
pace around the setting moon

And the breathing of dying worms
will spread beauty in catholic gene pools
tiding in summer's ice heaves

"I haven't left the Island in Four Years!"
"They don't give out blue ribbons for nothing."

The walls turn a sick ballet of mirrors
the feverish infinity of Wal*MART
and their low, low prices

the slim inches of beer rot in 6's
last night's nadir
a Pennsylvanian Dreamcatcher

"I forgot my umbrella!
I'm the only one who brought one from Wisconsin!"
She says, in a purple shirt
with a chipped dog on the front

Zebra'd light through blinds
on half a ruby tiffany
sun over west main, the bay
Providence plantation
Dormant street lamps grimly reaps
over pre-fab military housing
black shutters, doors

wild grass fruits
in the highway wind.