(or Perhaps you Don't)
I was hitching on the side of an inauspicious, unexpectant country backroad; two or three low-slung, long-eared, not leashed, friendly, rich dark brown hounds were padding the area they thought was theirs. I was by their mailbox, in fact a dozen mailboxes, each on their own wood upright, small tin-domed coffins awaiting mail, when this big ass ole Buick pulled up. I’d got lost in thought between the low-slung four-legged’s, their ear tips sweeping the paving, and the riot of mailboxes, and I don’t think I was still waving my thumb for a ride. She of the handsome ole style big ass Buick had her hand in one of the mailboxes. I can’t explain what she exactly looked like; first she was young and blonde, frizzy punk blonde, with black lipstick, green eyes, a short leather jacket and hot legs when I got into the passenger seat. “You need a lift?” (I thought she said “you need a life,” but I just nodded) and she’d pushed the door open for me. She revved up and we were off. When I looked at her again she had just lit a cigarette and proffered me one, which I accepted, although I hadn’t smoked in twenty years. She dragged on the cigarette and blew a perfect ring that hovered above her head like a smoking halo. She had one eye on the road and the other on me. I could see myself in her pupil, but it was me as a kid, perfectly me, but as a kid. Now her hair was grey and moving, writhing even. She was still overwhelmingly beautiful, but she was older than me. She took another hit on her cigarette, up went another perfect ring. When she shaped her mouth and blew those rings, it made my groin lurch... and she knew it. She started to talk in a slow, breathy, even, southern accent, like the sun setting on your fall barn door.
“You were once the loveliest son of heaven. What happened? But I still want you, despite looking into that devastated soul of yours. I’m fucking mad and jealous because you’re going to see her.”
I was smoking the cigarette, trying not to cough, and I didn’t have an answer. She’d turned back into the punk blonde with the green eyes and was fiddling with the car radio.
“I’m gonna have to murder your emanations, secret loves, and fallen graces. Cocoon you in sinewy threads, have you held in my filmy warp and weft. Have you sunk down suspended just above the Styx, a pale white corpse.”
She tuned the radio in...
NOBODY LIKES A REDNECK
TILL THEIR CAR BREAKS DOWN
It had gotten dark quick. The Buick cornered left just after the bridge. Over the river and out of nowhere, there’s a huge howl, shaking all nature to the utmost. Suddenly giant spiders are running through that black landscape, either side of us.
The radio’s singing...
THEN EVERYBODY LIKES A REDNECK
She blows another perfect halo smoke ring and in that slow leisurely, measured, southern drawl says...
“Now you’re nekkid, big boy, falling from the sky.”
I look in her eye and sure enough, there I am... bare ass naked... falling thru the sky...
thick flaming thought creating flames... illuminating my falling body... my amazed face...
I fall I fall in her eye... fall thru space...
This descent, this creation. All a mix of mind and lungs, floating without will. Holding an immense flashlight of fire. My form a human illusion...
WELL I LIKE ME A REDNECK SANTE CLAUSE
Her hair is beginning to writhe again in grey coils, her lips no longer black lipstick, but crimson. One hand on that Buick’s steering wheel, for a moment she gives me both eyes. I'm taken with a cosmic shiver.
She sings (it’s a low Ella Fitzgerald croon)
“Weep,
May you all weep,
Oh moneyed reason.
Face away,
Now face away,
Your time is done.”
REDNECK SANTE CLAUSE HAS HIS SLEIGH ON LIFTS
She pulled over, into a pull off, under some tall oaks. A flicker of moonlight in the swaying branches.
She put her hand on my thigh... and whispered in my ear...
“Now I draw you out,
In flames of fire,
Mate with me,
My heart’s desire.”
DRINKS OLE MILWAUKEE LIKES GRITS AN TITS
...She turned the radio off with her free hand...
