this happened not so long ago
it actually mattered whether the back of his hair
touched the collar on his shirt
and if it did, he was told to get a haircut
don’t want to smudge the company name ya know
what is this, the 50’s?
customers who would be horribly offended I’m sure
nowadays of course anything goes as people try
to outfreak each other
he’d get there early in the morning
after pancakes, eggs and steak, or a wish omelette
setting out new stock in the store, straightening the old
fuel pumps, water pumps, alternators, starters, disc & drum brakes
air fresheners and all that other junk
at lunch he’d go behind the building with his co-worker Luis
take a broomstick and bring a tennis ball and play some old baseball
in the loading dock
high flys, pop-ups, strikeouts, balls off the wall
meaning they hit a closed loading dock door on the fly
a prodigious blast
on days it rained they’d go out to eat
wendy’s salad bar on fridays because his mexican friend Luis was a good catholic
on days he wasn’t screwing around on his wife
Luis would talk about this puerto rican girl he was seeing on the side
I don’t know much about catholicism but that had to be against some kind of tenet
or on some days they’d drive into the barrio
getting chicken and fries that you knew was good
because the grease soaked the bag by the time they got back to eat
eating and listening to songs on the radio
talking about what they’d do if they had
the chance to do it —but for now
it’s dead men walking managers and deader than dead customers
working a dead end job
ghosts that would come in and fly about and act like poltergeists
when they didn’t get their way
so one day he had e-nuff and decided
to head down florida way one way
packed up all his troubles in his old deuce and a quarter and split
like the sky touched by lightning
