by Justin Lacour

a kid from Agawam is arguing with a kid from Chicopee over the cheapest place to buy gas
in the year i stop selling knives door to door and go back to working in kitchens
the cook and i balance drums of grease at the end of each night out into the alley
out where the bears lurk and raid dumpsters for scraps the mom and her cubs all summer
Crowbar tries to get folks to call Williamsburg Mass. the “burgie”
and i go to a party up in Shutesbury thrown by the women who raise rabbits
in the year my ocd first flares up Warren Zevon is dying Johnny Cash is dying
and i truly believe my car will stall if i don’t play the same three Ryan Adams songs over and over
in the year i hallucinate that middle-age guy hiding in my bushes
who asks me to stand next to him so the cops will let him be maybe he is an angel
it’s always good to have an angel and a train and a hat and a graveyard
like those songs in my cold apartment “Engine 143” or “Stagger Lee” or “Delia”
that are my companions in the year the lost war begins
and the cook calls me Hollywood because i’ll be famous for nothing
but washing dishes and mopping floors and smoking two cigarettes at once
and the last time i imagined the middle-age guy he was waiting for his ride
so i stood next to him on Pleasant Street to throw off the cops
he said he worked at the velveteen factory near Spencer our smoke our breaths
rising up to the streetlight like we had souls to spare it began snowing we waited a long time

Justin Lacour lives in New Orleans with his wife and three children and edits Trampoline: A Journal of Poetry (also on X / Twitter).