David Jackson

Detours

Rounding the curve, halted by the SUV’s
emergency blinkers winking like some
Dis tower, I fell obediently in line as a
first grader in the cafeteria.

Head on collision, the officer said,
before directing me to the detour
ahead. Passing the crumpled car,
front shoved in like a monkey playing
accordion, I noticed the blanket covered
form loaded like a cord of wood
into an ambulance.

This one on a final detour from Sunday
morning church. But aren’t we all on
deviations, diversions?

Through the rain, the mist, the mountain
road, around one bend & an Amish
horse & buggy clattered on asphalt.
What detours awaited that black capsule?

Who could know. Detours.
Bypasses in time like a train switching
tracks.

If I had detoured from the first love,
where would the train have taken me?
Not that moment, so not this minute.
Daughters instead of sons.
Dogs instead of cats.

Detours.

What about your sidetrack?
you would have married
another & never went with
your wife to find her brother
three weeks dead sprawled in the
doorway halfway between the
bathroom & bedroom. You never
forgot the smell.

Or your sister who lost her rosary &
became a whore not a nun &
never met the suicide she would
have saved.

Detours.

Like the Amish above who swerved
away from the 21st century, zigged instead
of zagged, found themselves in a 19th
century wormhole so that I would spy
them on this Sunday detour on a road with
many curves.

Becoming Invisible

They moved from city to suburbs. They were
lost, gobbled up, in some dark downstairs
apartment, all you could see were walls.
It was like they’d stopped living, so much

a part of the city they were, and where they
moved wasn’t desolate, a little city, but not
theirs of five-story brick walls, cobbled hills.
I see his long coat and fedora, her pillbox

hat with the little veil. You opened a window
looked out at other windows, fire escapes,
brick walls across the street. All that
was gone when they made the move, his

suspenders, the scar from her operation.
This new place it was like they weren’t there.
 
Ed’s Manor Tavern

He’d been drinking at Ed’s and left alone.
His Pontiac failed to make the long turn,
toppled into a culvert, no seatbelts back
then, his leg smashed, half between Ed’s
and home, a Lorillard exec, heavyset, iron
gray hair, plaster cast, bulbous pitted nose.

On his breezeway soda bottles in wooden
crates, he couldn’t lift one then. I liked
the colors: lime orange strawberry black
brown red yellow, a rainbow of bottled sugar
in drab but sturdy crates delivered weekly
to his door. One color clear, like water.
 
Cape Man

Sal Agron was the Cape Man,
only he wasn’t a man. Sixteen,
he stabbed two teenagers

in ‘59, his story
in news pages spread on a stone floor.
Fish guts soaked the paper.

Robin’s gran cleaned trout.
On a breezeway
light shone through jalousies. Sal’s

dark pompadour crested his pale brow.
His long, straight nose led him astray.
Her hand turned the blade.

From the Old Country,
she came to the States
with her husband, lived with her

daughter, son-in-law,
two grandkids. I wonder if Sal,
in jail, left a daughter.

Under an oak Robin’s gran
taught me not to walk on my toes.
The brown bun threaded with gray

at the top of her head resembled a pin
cushion. Stout, she wore specs.
Her hands held long needles,

crocheting wool.
She sliced down skin, opening trout.
Their insides soaked Sal’s cape.
 
I Hate Authority

Parents teachers cops judges—
don’t like anyone telling me what to do.

Okay, moron. Consider,
no authority, no order. There’d be chaos.
Some desperate soul slits your throat
as you sleep,
steals the Timex
off your wrist as your blood runs
in the gutter.
Authority’s a good thing,
so long as its hand doesn’t reach so far
as to tell you
how to button your shirt or blouse
and what to read and eat.
You’re an idiot with your hatred
of authority. Then, some think
they can make you see and act differently.
They can’t. I’m sorry a parent
or just something in your DNA made
your bad attitude. Music,
drugs, bullying, neglect, poverty?
Your poverty of spirit I lack.
I’m superior. I’m an asshole.
I just don’t want someone barging in
and taking everything
and my life.