Poem: “Gambling”

April 25: 30 days of new poems for National Poetry Month

Gambling

Accumulated through the season, like black exhaust
on white snow, winter’s cruelties linger — a dirty
epidermal merengue sealing in all that would otherwise
melt within us. We are pushed to the side as highway-side
snow is, as soon as the plows can get through. Or, in our
case, as soon as something better looms ahead. We are
not so much disposable as relocatable — strewn out to ever
larger landfills of outmoded skills and irrelevant experience.

Just a few minutes across the state line, you can stop
for gas and a bathroom in Verdi, Nevada. Despite the
beauty of the surrounding mountains, Verdi smells
only of diesel and nicotine. You have to be 21 to walk
the carpets where the gambling happens. Everyone here
is dead inside. Only their outward selves persevere.