Poem

Today is the Second Annual Brigid in Cyberspace Silent Poetry Reading.

* * *

San Joaquin Valley No. 1

A teenage girl
works the night shift
at a self-serve gas station
in Modesto.

She says little
but what she does say
is without a smile and through a hole
in the window.

She wears
an orange and pink uniform
under the shadowless
yellow fluroescent lights.

All the customers
make jokes
as a cold wind blows
across the valley
but
she doesn't laugh.

~ Dave Alvin, Any Rough Times Are Now Behind You: Selected Poems and Writings