the a list

Newton Corner – Andrew Furst (the negation of John 1:1 in relative time and space) Hunting yard sales with a map and the want ads; I drove, and she navigated. Real navigating – before phones told us where to turn. The other two, A woman and a man, Were walking from Farlow Park to Church Street. She would speak. He went mostly unnoticed. The car turned down Waverly onto Church. Moving from the familiar to the uncertain; Trying to get the tires of the car onto the streets on the map. Further down Church Street, the old Volvo settled up to the curb, and we met. Knowing now that we construct our futures out of the past, I have to reflect, all these years later, on the brokenness of it all. There is an alleyway scribbled on the map of the human heart. Hidden doorways open to it, letting phantoms come and go. You can tell by the holes in their shadows that a broken heart is a broken mind. As all the futures quietly worked themselves out, three of us began speaking the words, moving our faces...

Barstow, CA  Just north of the Mojave in 1975, I crossed the California border on route 15 In a Continental Trailways bus. It was the summer I learned to play guitar. The driver tipped off the toll booth attendant That we had a drunk in the back. Nearly to Barstow, the bus pulled over to flashing lights. Someone in a uniform took my grandma’s oranges And the guy in the back. They took the oranges, because of fruit flies. They took the man because his undercover FBI agent story Was all swagger and booze, but no badge. The forced air, Cold, dry, and flavorless Mixed in my head with the fish stick nausea I’d carried from Williamsport, Pennsylvania, It spun a psychedelic yarn Of desert buttes and orange earth across the plexiglass window. Like those movies without a soundtrack.