The Unbearably Penultimate of Parable, poetry by Dennis Mahagin

I drove over the fat rope thing

that made the bells ding and

ling and then this grease monkey appeared

at my open window, wearing braided ponytail

with his Speed Racer eyes, brandishing

a tattered broach rag thing he whipped

about like … *what?* about twenty

watts of dirty lariat– surely

a dervish with a nascent

flourish.

"Fill her up?" he asked.

"Nah," I said "seven bucks of unleaded." …

"Seven bucks?"

"Yah."

This was a spot in Cougar, Washington where they still

did Full Service; in fact, if you tried to pump your own

a placard said they're just as like to call the law. Before

the days of video poker machines, or virtual speed balls,

a standing ad in the Thrifties maintained somebody

could come over (even, or especially, in the middle

of the night) to buy your car for scrap,

you sign over the title, oh, it never

seemed right.

"Check that oil?" said the kid.

"Sure," I said, as if late

for a picnic, Christ, needing a shave, and some

hitchhiker with brown Gandhi face and bomber

jacket, just to come shambling up the medium

island, change the direction

of my life.

Now the kid was going

great guns, Quixotic with squeegee

and copious ammonia bug juice in the middle

of my pane. Only 9 years prior,

Mt. St. Helens had blown

the cap off that whole face, and I knew

I should have been someplace, by then:

a feeling it, in my bones, yet you could get

plum discombobulated driving those winding

roads, up around Cougar. The sun

shining, like to break your freaking

heart; this kid had a tattoo of a miniature

anchor, inches away from his carotid

artery swinging like clapper

inside a bell. All of it, added

up just as well to a feeling

of being recounted

later: in a week, I'd lose

my ride to those cage crushers out of Gresham, fat

Sopranos with pompadors, that hideous running ad

inside a Thrifty. Little black snowflake smudgies

and a silver ball of steel, no bigger

than any picnic basket.

"Check that tire pressure?" said the kid, wiping

his forehead you haven't seen skinny until this

sweat, and then hiss, what I'd be telling you

about … "Nah," I said "listen how I get back

to Portland?"

He pointed south with left

hook, or claw I hadn't noticed

till now, sun glint on chrome, luminous moon

cuticle drilling down to the no thumb, no thumb,

no bone at all sir so piteous young and full of

jones. "Here," I said handing out my last

tenner, open window, scent of black tar

and choke cherries, fresh baked bread

infused by 3 in 1, I'd just turned thirty

two, up in Cougar sometimes smoking

rubber, and I hardly ever used

the rear view.

Dennis Mahagin is the author of the chapbook, "Fare,"

available from Redneck Press, and the print collection,

"Grand Mal," published by Rebel Satori Press