HUNGER

Appalachian
car hood
open at a funeral

round and round the poor man
repairs the same
flat tire

trashcan fire,
thrown away
men warm their hands

parachuting snowflakes,
momentary
truce

laid off again,
tells his wife,
grips the kitchen table

...red potatoes and
...the mineral taste
...of truth

INTERSTATE

car radio
at night
erases Indiana

Bud Powell
on piano, black puddles
gleam

those starlings
in Ohio,
alphabet of dusk

walking bass,
Ron Carter
makes all the right stops

Thelonious Monk leans,
semi-trailers
rock

come morning,
sipping trucker
coffee, Terre Haute

NOVEMBER TWILIGHT

aspirin moon
dissolves into
the stillness of a rake

cat pads over,
sniffs
empty hiking boots

brown bat or
Woody Guthrie,
every breath his home

...gramps couldn’t
take that heavy
overcoat to heaven

today my battered Buick
beamed proudly
in the sun

like a Roman shield,
before and
after the war

Mark Jackley lives and works in Purcellville, Virginia. His poems have appeared in Fifth Wednesday, Sugar House Review, The Cape Rock, Natural Bridge, and other journals. His most recent collection of poems is On the Edge of a Very Small Town, available by emailing chineseplums@gmail.com.