Truck for Sale

by Jeremy Voigt

"And you stand on some mountain road weeping." -Robert Bly from The Face in the Toyota A shrimp's heart is in its head.   So near the house just down the road a truck for sale. Not much news unless of course you need a truck. This one: small a Nissan I think, with canopy no visible rust. No truck for hauling but a good body with minimal miles. So little reliable in the world. So little to spark the imagination. So little to see out the window. But there it is a truck for sale. On the road, parked next to a home from which a man exits at night weeps beside his truck on the road. It is for sale and he is weeping. It is not the first thing he has lost, nor to be the last. But it was his truck now for sale, beside the road, the sign with his number and name. Not much can get a man on his knees. But his midsize, below average rundown clunking everytime in fourth gear, truck gets this man on his knees at night amid dandelions dying and spreading seed. The light either moon or streetlamp haloing something once loved, gives him a new feeling. Shrimplike, his heart in his head, his pulse deafening, the only sound he knows, blood, as if he is drowning, drowning in a sound that is so much of him it is completely foreign. If he could chose his death, it is here, on his knees, late night, one hand in the grass, one hand on the metal slab of his old bed. We don't choose, and eastern light comes, the sign is still there I can see it, a nice little truck for sale and if you are interested I can walk up the street and ask him how much?