The Autumn Sedan by John Davis
The off-key clarinetist will never hit the high C
in ”Tequila,” but she keeps on blowing
and the marching band keeps on enlarging
its column right corners in the final rehearsal
before school begins. All August
a school daze has been approaching
like a glow-worm. The fifth-year senior
has tattooed his forearm with a naked woman.
In the parking lot he is flexing and flexing
until his veins pop up like autumn sedum.
He drains down a beer he bought with fake ID
from Maine. He guns his truck engine.
In a month he will drop out
for hunting season, bag a buck and honk
past the school displaying the antlers.
A refugee from the sailing team picks up
a class schedule and admires the wiry lines
of the girl who’s hanging on to the school’s
smoothest drug dealer. Her fingers
are getting high and still higher up his thighs.
Tomorrow the ringing bells will summon ghosts
of former students, dead in Iraq. The words
new students are learning will challenge the books
where they live where they murmur where they
memorize graffiti and undress their syllables.
