Driving Back From Hollywood

*

Traffic was crawling.

I knew we’d be stuck for hours,

gaining inches at a time.

You asked me what I thought.

I said, “Different, than I expected.”

 

The stars on the street didn’t shine.

The musicians played for change,

and the town didn’t seem to know

that it leaves you dirty.

My thoughts were broken up,

sighting a traffic obstruction;

A truck had spilled a load of lemons,

covering the road with yellow skin,

crushed by many tires into something like steam

that flooded the nostrils of everyone driving through,

like a hanging air freshener magnified

thousands of strengths.

As much as we hated traffic,

nobody honked their horn

or cursed for quite some time.

The scent was too strong to focus

on anything other than lemon pulp

and yellow peels as far as we could see,

crushed against the highway,

sour and broken and clean.

                                -Brent Allard