Junk Hour

Styrofoam tumbleweeds skirt
cracked blacktop. A banner

slaps Space for Rent in red
against a concrete wall between

Mattress Firm and Marshall’s.
Mannequins, cotton-clad, cut-rate,

watch the lot’s already faint grid fade
across the distance. Six lanes

and a dirt median divide
this strip mall from the next,

where PetSmart lingers like a desert
mirage as manure stench drifts

from southern fields, mingles
with gasoline in dry heat. Food

arrives fresh off conveyor belts,
plastic-wrapped. Everything

is politics, or nothing is. If
my mood’s not right,

the butt rock clattering from trucks
parked on either side doesn’t help—

though any noise will do, I guess,
to drown out my radio’s news,

which is a drag. Listen,
it isn’t the drag queens stripping

my kids of Medicaid. A quarter
mile from here, mansions shadow

19th Street. A smattering
of billboards tout fireworks,

firearms, and attorneys—
Got hit? Call Schmidt.

In the check-out line, a bald eagle talons
a torch and a gun on a bald man’s shirt.

I shove a plastic rectangle, chip-side,
into a thin slot, and Wi-Fi waves

transmit decimals to a tall building
half a country away, where

a computer spits out what I still owe—
or some high-tech bullshit like that.

Josh Luckenbach's recent work has appeared in The Southern Review, Shenandoah, Nimrod, Birmingham Poetry Review, New Ohio Review, and elsewhere. He serves as Poetry Editor for EcoTheo Review and as Web Editor for the Coalition for Community Writing.