is just that sort of town.
Airless summers,
broke down cotton buggies,
a faded Texaco sign
outside a
cinder block building.

Two work bays and a
service counter with a
rack of slumped candy bars and a
stack of Skoal tins
all but one of them wintergreen.

You can get gas in Jackass Flats
if you have cash and luck,

luck is always standing on the side of the road
with its thumb out
looking for a bumper to ride

to some other town with a
Conoco station and
unflavored Skoal in the mechanic’s back pocket.
Larisa Harriger is a detective, archeologist, taxonomist, cartographer, cowboy, dancing bear trainer, and occasional janitor to a variety of inherently unstable systems. She holds a charmingly old-fashioned Master of Librarianship degree but couldn’t lay her hands on her copy of the Iliad on a five dollar bet. You can read her occasional ramblings at shinymagpie.net.