K.A. McGowan

Squealing brake pads and runaway generators

remind me of all the factory jobs I didn’t want,

of tilted pinball machines in smoky rooms,

of Delaware & Hudson freight cars

stacked to the brim with empty Budweiser bottles.

Couldn’t say when my childhood friends and I

turned the talk from Columbian Gold

to Medicare Plan B and deductibles.

Time I lost track of.

Love I lost the feeling for.

I’ll need a plot of level ground

to shoot a new azimuth with my rusty compass

and try to make some sense

of this new geography.