Six Flags Great America was a hell hole.
Sixteen years old and
the manager was nineteen.
She spent a lot of time
in the bathroom and when
she was not there
she was busy
writing her name,
in puffy letters
with the insides of the "A"s
shaped like pudgy, irritated, sphincters,
on every blank piece and back side
sheet of paper in the red ink
reserved for till totaling and
performance reviews.
When I wasn't busy
explaining to customers
that they could not have their choice brand
of pop and would have to settle
for equally fattening competitors
because posting a sign
was frowned upon,
I sat next to the funnel cake fryer coils
watching white bricks of lard
melt into amber pools
listening to them groan
against the background of screams of
thrill seekers unable to find
excitement enough in their day to day and
wondering why ear plugs
are acceptable in less jarring factories and
not in a mill whose only purpose
was to extract violent sounds from
every throat that passed through its gate.
Afterward, turned on and off and on again
by her antics and
the stink of sweat and some kind of
poorly defined fear seeker passion
mingled rich with wave tank chlorine and
head spinning sunlight, I sat outside the gates
in air too cool for late August
waiting for my parents to pick me up,
knowing they would show
eventually and
the children sat with me.
Fumbling in the flowers
patterned after American flags and
bursts of fireworks
fallen to the grass and all
various shades of street light silenced orange and black,
they clawed and danced and tagged one another,
climbed up my back and lolled in my lap,
yawning and laughing and itching my
polo shirted elbows.
They fell over each other and poked
at my cheeks and asked me
so many questions, but they
kept me company
against the eleven P.M. winds of
another summer night
burned away and replaced
with the stiff, flaky char, of
"this really is, all there is" glass shard scattered
flights of "one day at a time" fancies
they kept me warm inside and
tuned and uncoiled my knotted nerves and
laid them straight once again,
that my hands could play a song
in the absence of the sun
on an instrument
not too far out of tune and
not too far gone to,
once and for all, put away.
