Deal with the Drive

What compliments the Christmas tree farm
more than the rural liquor store? How about
the Klan memorial across the street
with its car dealer sized rebel flag?
A trio of obsolescence, the trees
awaiting execution, the flag as limp
as its social prospect and the parking lot
of the liquor store, empty yet.
Though it’s not yet noon enough,
blue laws aside, for the needy
to wheel in for a lunch of blue light.

I drive by at 65, worried that my fix-a-flat
fixed tire might not handle another week
of seventy fives.
I notice still how even
travel itself is a redundancy. Some coming,
some going in lifeless vectors, caravans
of weeds and browning horizons, here
a creek-poisoned valley, there an impotent
cell phone tower mocking. Or worse
the dead houses still standing on the road
like zombies, decaying, lurching
to consume me back to the past, boards
on the windows like coins on eyes.
Doorways unhinged of doors
like the mouths of the beaten agonizing
on after the beatings have ended.