the eager midnight haze in the Dream of America:
a moon tacked like a photograph to the gaunt,
ballpoint darkness above

the grand rigs whaling in around the oil-checkered lot,
a slow procession of American steel and
freight

the old truck stop sign, its laughter like yellow jasper,
a haze garrulous as nineteen-seventy-six or seventy-five,
impressing no one

trammeling in the lot of us from the deep, scattered
night and the soft-spoken corners of the industrial
Midwest

the woman is like a city to look back on, breathless,
sleepless, the smokestack eyes towering and bold,
scattering our glances

inside the unholy stale light of the convenient store:
the corroded dimes and American Spirits exchange
sun-blistered hands

the unmistakable hang of over-smoked coffee
grasps onto the salt of musky, unshaven faces
and ashy flannel shirts

I have drunk down the saccharine of each night,
looked back too many times, asked the slender
moon to talk me out of this

the fog-lights of the rigs go on scraping back the
strong scrim of summer darkness outside, glaring
as the fructose of memory

the Sweet'N Low dissolved like laughter in each Diet
Coke taken for the road, a Big Gulp variety when it
comes to the rough telling of this life

and she wanted to be remembered, grasping onto the
sleeve, the amber eyes never so inviting, dark and true
as a far-off skyline

and the varnished golden haze of the truck stop sign
muffled its bars of Americana, released the grand rigs
back to the darkness

never so inviting, the cheap flicker of beltway lights
I regard, losing my breath, though I cannot seem
to turn back into gas