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Collected Poetry

    (rd king dot net)
poetry and digital art

In California

  Outside Modesto 


She was black and he was white.
They rode in a big car with bad paint
and the muffler was tied-up with wire.
She was driving.  He was stretched-out
in the front.  A little wind
was stumbling through the nut orchard.
Evening was coming on.  There were snakes
on the road, languid with the heat,
and she drove over them.

They stopped at a burger stand
off the county road.  It was hardly
a town.  He went to the window
while she combed her hair.  She got out
and walked up to a white truck with
two black men inside.  They said nothing
almost.  She got back in the car.
He had bought her a milk shake—a coke
and a burger for himself.  The wind
kicked up dust from the plowed field
and blew it across the road.  Almost
nothing happened, but the sun went down.




 
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