Continuum
by Jennifer Battisti
Vegas, 91
Under the eves of the 7-11 whole galaxies are forming.
Exodus in Doc Martins arrive, clove-cloaked in hazy
Pink Floyd replicated armor, indigo hair
sprayed in the alley minutes before.
Suicide Slurpees are straw-sucked at the speed of light,
kaladisocoping comets into throats full
of futures that will not come.
Girls with inky eyes take big gulps
of adolescence as if it were bottomless.
Mothers with cracked faces slip coins
into video poker window-seats while
toddlers wait with full diapers and dirty feet--
We don’t know anything yet,
how most of us will not make it further
than the distance of the day’s supply,
our bodies celestial after
two bong hits and a hot dog.
We are still there, orbiting convenience,
like breakfast links on a turnstile grill, still
shoplifting diet pills and Zig-Zags— paralleled
with our now existence.
Sometimes a glimpsed bifold flashes back our
reflection, prism in an open door, the sun sling-shot
into a fissure in the fabric of time, bent
just so—the way a decade goes down like instant coffee.
For a moment we meet our juvenile selves,
our potential still shelved like motor oil and NoDoz,
The continuum assembled later--
after the blue-blazed quasar devours our young lives.
Exodus in Doc Martins arrive, clove-cloaked in hazy
Pink Floyd replicated armor, indigo hair
sprayed in the alley minutes before.
Suicide Slurpees are straw-sucked at the speed of light,
kaladisocoping comets into throats full
of futures that will not come.
Girls with inky eyes take big gulps
of adolescence as if it were bottomless.
Mothers with cracked faces slip coins
into video poker window-seats while
toddlers wait with full diapers and dirty feet--
We don’t know anything yet,
how most of us will not make it further
than the distance of the day’s supply,
our bodies celestial after
two bong hits and a hot dog.
We are still there, orbiting convenience,
like breakfast links on a turnstile grill, still
shoplifting diet pills and Zig-Zags— paralleled
with our now existence.
Sometimes a glimpsed bifold flashes back our
reflection, prism in an open door, the sun sling-shot
into a fissure in the fabric of time, bent
just so—the way a decade goes down like instant coffee.
For a moment we meet our juvenile selves,
our potential still shelved like motor oil and NoDoz,
The continuum assembled later--
after the blue-blazed quasar devours our young lives.
Jennifer Battisti, a Las Vegas native, studied creative writing at the College of Southern Nevada. Her work has appeared in the anthology, Legs of Tumbleweed, Wings of Lace, as well as The Desert Companion, Minerva Rising, The Citron Review, Helen: A Literary Magazine, FLARE, Red Rock Review, 300 days of Summer and elsewhere. In 2016 Nevada Public Radio interviewed her about her writing. She holds a leadership position on the Las Vegas Poets Organization and has assisted in implementing the Alzheimer's Poetry Project in Clark County. Her first chapbook. Echo bay, is forthcoming in 2018.
