Dashboard Saints of America

What does it mean to be a dashboard saint in America?

A little piece of plastic Jesus bobbing it’s head back and forth

wafting in car fog.... coughing on the stench of 66 cigarettes snuffed out in an ashtray.

A clay little mold with the finger-print of a first-grader. Happy Birthday to the best father in the world. That you old man? Your boots at the bedside. Dirt on the floor. Spit in the sink. Cum on the couch cushions.

The ones I sit on. Rest on.

Eyes closed and dreaming.

Skip, skip, BANG. We hit a speed bump, and whiplash I’m up again.

Ain’t one thing’s changed except for the blood on the tires.

It’s still hot. Hot, hot.

Hot leather, like beans flaming in the pan, and onto my tongue. Kill my taste buds for the stretch of the I-35.

I wish I was high.

But I’m not.

And there’s sweat on my lip. Sweat on my chest. Sweat in all them private places, I don't like to sweat, but I do.

Feedback screeching from the radio, the AM. The dashboard doctrines of Sunday morning. I wonder what the preacher and his wife did last night. Or what he and the deacon did before comin’ on home to his wife’s casserole.
A little peach cobbler “a la mode.”

Here’s your wine spritzer Dear. Spike it with alkaline and make him choke. Oh.. OH OHHHHH

And Oh how the angels sing on high. Sweet pocket praises to the one and the holy, our heavenly father.

And so we pray.

Pray for the able and the Aryan. The moral and the monied.

For the status quo. And the dosey doe....

And for smiles.

The ones we make even when we don’t mean it.

Sun in my eyes and I squint.

Through the slits, I see the big plastic head bobbing back and forth. I see his painted on smile, his bleach-white teeth and a hellish yellow halo.

Probably made from that penny an hour, Taiwanese table paint.

The toxic kind.

xoLo

I'm stuck on a long drive, and it's true - everything's bigger in Texas.