A twelve-year-old
does figure-eights
on his barleycorn-flavored bicycle
in the church parking lot.
He will remain fatherless.
His widowed mother
stands on the corner of their street
with checkered flag,
posting the finishers
to the 1961 Indianapolis 500.
A keypunch operator,
she spends her days in a scriptorium,
with Hollerith at her fingertips.
Two blocks away in a five-and-dime,
the twelve-year-old,
now sixteen,
is about to discover Pigeon Feathers,
remaindered,
is about to be sheparded
beyond the lumber of English 11
and into the hills
alive with the sound of Muzak.
