On the street in front of her house he waits in a baby blue Pinto head lights off exhaust clouds winter white, yellowed street lights. She is seventeen. She climbs in and over the front seat and changes out of Guess jeans into lace pants skin tight, black lace gloves, the equal and opposite color of the yellow hood. Black eyeliner in the visor mirror. Leather seats white leather jacket his blonde hair. Downtown Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center. House lights are up. They float, roll beneath a cumulus of smoke. The concrete floor echoes every voice until the organ grinds them against the iron railing in front of their seats where they never sit. But flick ashes, taste sweet strawberry liquor—with a thousand tiny fires held high. A low-pressure system from the Gulf makes everything sway like trees like a voodoo dance until purple flowers float from the ceiling, from the afterworld.
His car to take her home is cold smells like stale beer. She peels the black lace pants but not the black lace gloves and moves between him and the steering wheel. Unfiltered Camels, windows cracked, windshield wipers mix the sleet and snow. Ice along the power lines, pine tree limbs. She is late. She is always late.
At home, her mother’s Bible black hair waits.
How her mouth perverts when she says whore.
