Lost Settlement

Cement steps are more brittle
On the southern side of Oak Street.
Denim against pasty skin,
Icy even in late summer sunsets.

You know how it feels when you put your clothes on too early,
That “cling and stick” because you’re still wet?

You see, everything is cooler here
In this broke down place.
They’ll mark your tomb with historic curlicues.
“Here laid one warm body.”

Everyone lives to die here,
In this middle finger of land.

We don’t pay for movies,
But waste around the back door,
Communing together – with broken pavement,
Crackle scratch of dead leaves.

We burn on with tapped cigarette
While paper curls and chill ash falls to stone.
We all smoke when we’re drinking.
Honestly, we smoke all the time.

Buzzed hard as the sun drops,
We forget – we forget – about the money
We all don’t have.

There’s not much work,
But lots of labors,
In this town.

That’s okay with us.
Dragging, drinking, puffing;
Bound together in one smoke ring,
Waiting to die.

Years from now, when they scroll up our tombstones,
Children will honor the cracks in the cement
Arms linked in the haze and scratch of leaves,
Clinging to the chilled bones of this town.