My mom tried to sweep clean the cigarette burns on the armrest, and turned the plastic-cracked lampshade away from rare houseguests. The arrow-shaped gap melted at the middle and leaked down the shade like a stopped- up gutter. Climbing out her bedroom window, she knelt on the rotten mint shingles and tossed matted maple leaves as indiscriminately as rock salt onto the glassy sidewalk drinking in the overhead halo of Penelec Electric and pine needles.
Needlesβ
The red biohazard suitcase in the dining room is packed full for distribution in a Philadelphian switchyard.
City of Brotherly Burning Barrels and railroad-tie benchesβ but not for dressing up suburban meditation gardens, or housing yellow jackets and half-melted Army men. For sitting, sleeping, and supplying calf splinters for small talk along the Schuylkill River, watching the cell lights of Eastern State get swallowed whole by the systematic tall grass, one by one, thanking some blessed something for their freedom in the boxcars, their *** and Lucifer matches, and each other.