Joey Palumbo
How quickly our thoughts pass from our minds
and go into the asteroid belt
around the waist of Jupiter
there was a Prevagen commercial
that showed our brain as some kind of neural network
interconnected
with tiny flashes of light
each flash a thought
it also looked suspiciously like a small arbor vitae
then an image of jellyfish
that had something to do with memory
I didn’t like that one very much
jellyfish being just a symbol for
wishy-washiness or indecision
something Hamlet would understand
but back to that neural network
and its resemblance to
branches of arbor vitae bushes
which reminds me of my old boss
Joe Palumbo, who
when we got a roadbuilding contract
for the North-South Tollway
discovered a row of arbor vitaes on the right-of-way
and said
‘dig them up a get them transplanted
at my house’
So our landscaper said
‘Don’t do it. They’ll all die
their roots aren’t trained’
but Joey wouldn’t listen
and we went ahead with it
sure enough
they all died
then
just to show you how nimble his mind was
Joey said,
‘Hey! There’s also a pole barn on the right-of-way
get our demo contractor to take it apart
piece by piece and put it back up
In my back yard’
and the demo contractor said
‘I’ll never get those pieces of sheet metal
to line up without drilling a bunch of new holes
and then the thing will leak’
but
you guessed it
Joey Palumbo told us to go ahead
and soon he had the leakiest pole barn
in Cook County
finally
as work progressed on the Tollway
Joey saw that our dirt subcontractor Ryan
had some steel plates near their trailer
big ones
about twenty feet long
‘I want those plates’ he said
and he sent out the boom truck with
George Demas and Phil Hamm
one morning to load them up
and I said ‘no’
disgruntled, they went back to the shop
Joey himself came out to my trailer
I told him
‘Ryan will know it was you’
‘How will he know that?’ Joey said
‘I told them about the arbor vitaes and the barn’
Joey put two and two together
and went away, sulking
the next day
Phil Hamm and George Demas returned
hitched the boom truck to my trailer
and hauled it off with
telephone and electric lines still hooked up
sparks flew
circuit breakers broke
a transformer went dead
Joey Palumbo was not like others
in the Main Asteroid Belt
all his thoughts were interconnected

Dismal Car Wash
Nearby is a dismal car wash
with sunflowers in its lot
the sunflowers are meant to
cheer the place up a bit
you drive in and
the first thing is a row of
manual car wash stalls
you pull your car in
plunk quarters in a machine
and adjust the spray from
Pre-wash to Soap to Rinse
the designers of this apparatus
have been thoughtful enough to allow you
to keep inserting quarters while the thing runs
each stall has trash on the floor
swept out by car owners too cheap
to pay a dollar for the vacuum
invariably you put it too little money
and race to finish within
your budget
out of the corner of your eye you can see
sunflowers drooping near the entrance
driving in further is the automatic car wash
manned by a surly attendant who takes
your four dollars without a smile
and reminds you to keep the wheels straight
and shut the windows
you go through the wash stages
the final rinse stage feels like
absolution after going to
Confession
where the priest absolves you of all sin
and your soul feels brand spanking new
water jets spray your roof
then the windshield, the hood and on down
outside a Spanish-speaking worker
waits to see if you want him to
towel off your car
for a dollar
he doesn’t bother even getting off his stool
because he knows a cheapskate
when he sees one
anyway, you avoid any possible eye contact
and go to the lot to dry off your car
by yourself
the sad sunflowers await you
smiling benevolently in the mid-day heat
trying to cheer you up
as you try to congratulate yourself
on how cheaply you got your car washed
you do not use Windex on the windows
you do not use Armor All Tire Shine or
Ultimate All Wheel Cleaner for the rims
you do not purchase a
Royal Pine air freshener for a buck
there is nothing the sunflowers can do
to cleanse your stingy self-image
as you drive home
you can see the dismal sunflowers
in your rear view mirror
laughing at you and
your dismal, half-clean car
even your soul feels grimy

Gerontology
You had a list of some funny definitions
about getting this far along
at the top was Red Skelton’s take on
The Three Stages of Man:
Youth
Middle-age, and
Hey, you look great!
you said
storing AA batteries in the fridge was a warning sign
and this wisecrack
‘the older you got
the shorter your Christmas tree’
but as you waded further into greatness
things took a darker turn
now, you can not only name all
the Supreme Court justices
you can remember their confirmation hearings
you say things like
‘Don’t take the subway to go downtown
they’re using it to get here from the
South Side’
and it dawns on you that
the only reason people talk to you
is to discourage you from
doing things you want to