Improv - B. H. Fairchild, "Madonna and Child, Perryton, Texas, 1967"

Vergil guides truckers up the shaggy spines
in hidden mountain roads strewn in willows,
up to the rest station where it hurts to eat
and burns to piss

there is disease waiting in toilet seats
beer-bloats packed in sardine can booths
peeling and stained by brown gravy beards
smelling of whore.

jesus is cheap here
white, too, somehow,
his cross is born on a wall above
a fattened calf of a child
ready to meat,
Jesus...

the cross creaks a belated response:
mala suerte, bestias.
mala suerte.

it is ignored.