Opening Days

He never liked fishing; loved
grease instead oozing in
hands beneath a white finned
Plymouth convertible, not sifting
loam for ‘walkers,
fingering layers of wet
leaves for garden reds.

But he went anyway, to kill
time between this girl
and that, waiting for money or
J. C. Whitney.  One fishless noon, even
catfish bottomed, he nudged a
loaded Coke bottle from the bank,
waited as it bobbed and swirled
the shallows.

The blast pelted us fifteen
yards away with pebbles and shards;
in the sky.
“Finally got some.” Fish oil
Rented our noses for hours.

I haven’t been back since I
lost him awhile ago;
his new Challenger fresh from
a quarter mile win,
slipped on South Bridge’s rotten wood,
bellywhopped Carn’s pool.

Now I just come here to fish,
wade in warm water, slide
between the stones.
Before it darkens, I’ll scale the catch
and watch sequins float
downstream to the deeper pools.

***

Charlie’s Store

The place smells of dust,
the slightly oiled, wiry specks
darting in sun shafts like
schools of tiny panicked
fish whenever the lead
crystal door arcs a
confused rainbow across the room
as someone’s patent leather
shoes shuffle over the
unpainted wood floor.

Behind the sparkling case,
above the grand penny
candy jars, Charlie drags
on the Camel, drops the ashes
around the church-keyed lid
of an old beer can he
holds just slightly to
the left of the sign

DON’T PRESS
ON
THE GLASS

across from the angled
flour tins he scans, while
skirted, after-school girls
lean over
with sugar in their eyes.

***

Coupons

Every week he ran the newspapers
traded and
scavenged through the exchange bins
at Piggly Wiggly
collecting coupons for grocery day.
Then catalogued,
price reduction coded,
he took his pocket calculator
and clip board with high intensity
book light
to each of four stores
to cut the bill,
run the system crazy.
And he did.

Just beyond the laundry soap
before the beverage aisle,
she loomed before him,
her perfect cardboard ankles
straddling hundreds of  plastic L’Eggs.
He loaded armfuls of flesh
and nude and beige and black

in three carts chained together
with two extra large
control tops.
All for nothing:
the jackpot,
the lottery.

And they gave him the model.

So he wheeled and bounced
through the automatic doors,
carts rocking and clanking
to the trunk of his car
where even today
at every stop
a  gentle wave folds
and tinkles around him
as the model snuggles
into a more comfortable
position.