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Revival Behind the Old Church on Hwy 98
I speed down highway 98 until the cop who hides
behind the McDonald’s sign pulls over a semitruck
ahead of me, and I notice a hand painted billboard
balanced on splintered stakes someone hammered
into the gray sand that we call dirt to my right when
I slow down, a sign with cramped, rushed, scribbled
lettering telling drivers that there was a Good Old
Fashioned Revival at the whitewashed clapboard
church that sits about a football field back from
the highway last Sunday. I hit the stoplight and look
closer. Did it work? Did all or part of the Trinity
show up? Did if the firepit they have in what might
be called a courtyard, help bring the congregation
closer to God? I get the feeling that someone screwed
up, that something else appeared. The ibises stalking
around the dead rose bushes are demons that came
instead of angels when the pastor prayed, his arms
raised over the flames. He sang the hymns backward,
broke them. The tent stands in the parking lot, shadow
fingers and tongues slipping through the pasture grass
toward the church, ready to chew the tin roof and I
don’t
mean to, but I make eye contact with the closest ibis
while it stabs a crumpled pamphlet of a cartoon Devil,
swinging his tail, throwing his pitchfork toward fire,
dancing over the black hole mouths of screaming sinners.
Redneck Priamel
Donna from Sweet Magnolia Bakery says
her favorite bar is the Wine Stable, but only
on Tuesdays because she likes to listen to
the guy who dresses like Tim McGraw from
the 90s, but sounds like gravel and asphalt
dropped in a blender and thrown from the top
of the court house roof, crack out his version
of “Redneck Yacht Club,” while Gator and his
wife Miss Carline prefer to go to Mulligans,
between the golf course and the swamp, so after
their third round they can borrow one of the carts
to run over water moccasins on their way home,
but Maureen thinks it’s worth it to drive all the
way out to Auburndale and drink at Belcher’s Barn
because no one there knows about her four dead
husbands, even though her ex-son-in-law swears
by the speakeasy behind the funeral home where
the owner pays off-duty-cops under the table to
work as bouncers and keep the rest of the law
from looking too closely at who finds their way
into that ally because he’s trying to keep it secret
from the guy who has Trailer Trash as his
windshield
banner who’s still loyal to Hurricane Ally out on
the north side of town even though they recently
banned smoking, because they only call in his tab
once a month, but, for me, my favorite bar is my
back yard with a failed hunting dog drooling under
my bare, grass-stained feet propped up on your
Levi’s, leaning back in a second-hand lounge chair,
with grapefruit leaves falling around us when fat
squirrels jump from branch to chain-link fence line
and mosquitoes who get through the bug spray we’ve
coated ourselves in whisper in our ears and all I need
for a refill is squeeze your hand and ask if you want
one too.
Pigbone’s Last Show at the Fancy Flea Antique Market
Pigbone sets up his guitar and mic in the middle
of an unpainted plywood stage balanced on four
rusted kegs when the clouds turn from white to gray
to black and vendors close the flaps on their generic
cobalt blue nylon tents, dragging collections of hand-
labeled antiques, stacks of homemade Adirondack
chairs, raw wood benches, and braided baskets
along with aluminum pails lined with embroidered
napkins and overflowing with saran-wrapped honey
cakes, lemon squares, and strawberry pies underneath
overhangs while Pigbone pulls his duct tape hair
into a ponytail, gently lacing his calloused fingers
around his Les Paul knock-off to pull it from its
Frankensteined case, not bothering to plug in his amp,
yelling out to the dregs of the Fancy Flea Market
crowd that he’d already been struck by lightning once,
he wasn’t sure if he’d live through it again but he
laughs
so we do too while he strums the chipped paint, grips
the neck that’d been glued back together at least three
times, sings without a microphone in an accent no one
but maybe his long-dead mother could understand,
rattles something about snakes smoking in tree limbs
and cans, asking us to dance if we are on his
wavelength,
using the thunder as the bass drum with a four-count,
pausing with his hand stuck to the E string, bending
his neck backwards, face toward the downpour, welcoming
the thunder and lightning, willing us to keep dancing.
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