in the la summer,
the heat doesn't whisper
it swells
and the hottest of the places
were the buses
big greenhouses on wheels
but i rode them,
for i had no car
and if i did
it would've been stolen
even though
i moved away from hidden hills
and now lived
on the face
of the sun
after a while,
i found my own
ways to rebel
drink gin out of
my water bottle
on the trip back home,
sit in the elderly
and handicapped
section
and that was what i was
doing when she entered the
bus
she was obviously ancient
and walked with a cane
so of course i moved to the side
as she passed me
the first thing i noticed
other than her skin that was almost purple
was the tattoo of the number
7
across her cheek
and no, this wasn't a young
woman
not the type to spend late nights
recording raps
for soundcloud in the back
of a crack house
we looked through each other for a
second,
and then she said to me
do you see it?
i shook my head
i didn't know what she
even meant
then she extended her hands
and still, nothing
was there
do you see it, she said again
i said no
she sighed
i have so much to tell you,
young woman
so much you need to know
i nodded
because when a crazy
old woman says things like that to you
you nod and smile
so much you need to know
her eyes were misted over
like lakes in the winter time,
cream in the bowl of
a tabby cat
we sat in silence
for a good while,
and then she looked at me again
in the summer, back home she said
when we left school
me and my friends would go drinking
there was a place called the golden shovel
and they had a huge pool table
me and mary would play, smoke cigarettes and
listen to jazz
it was the only time i
felt like i was alive
but when the cops came
mary was there, and i wasn't
they shot her dead
they said the bar was a hideout
for everything good and black
that my mother told me i should stand for
seven died,
and they said the golden shovel
was used to dig graves
i got this last year
she raised a long, peeling finger
to her cheek,
pointing at the seven
the bus ground to a halt as she
put her finger down
i looked at her
this is my stop
she said
before giving me a folded piece of paper
this is a poem i wrote
i took it and opened it, but by the time i
read it, she was already gone
*We real cool. We
Left school. We
Lurk late. We
Strike straight. We
Sing sin. We
Thin gin. We
Jazz June. We
Die soon.
None of this is true. I just had a stroke of whimsy.
And yes, the poem at the end is We Real Cool. If you didn't already know.
