The Los Gatos parking lot is filled with Lexuses, PT Cruisers, & Hummers. Housewives, angular & tan, stream by, eyelids creamed & lined, optimistic breasts nonchalantly pointing straight ahead, past the men striding confidently with their cellphones plugged to ears as though listening to somebody’s gospel, or mutual funds rising, or another country falling. Emerging, then disappearing again inside sleek metal & fiberglass cocoons, pistons fire in each cylinder of heart, spinning the world’s crankshaft, powering this endless rotation through the void. There is always someplace to go, something new to want. And the young single women slide by so unencumbered, radiant, untested by weddings, births, the thought of death — engines humming beneath hips, cache of eggs to spill or grow. How the young men revel, penises purring under red hoods, bent on roaring down the road. Or the aging beauty in pink pants, blue star shimmering on the curve of each bouncing cheek — doesn’t someone love her like a secret, like the only one worth having? Sometimes there’s just too much speed, something in you careening, looking for more, always more, cylinders of the heart wanting to slow, to meander past these opulent hills into the great brown fields of the San Joaquin — so much space you almost feel lonely for the small huddled towns, could almost start again, odometer counting down the years, the ones that are left, numerals fluttering languidly toward zero.
This poem previously appeared in the Porter Gulch Review.
