Night Creatures in Crossroads City

Cruces night creatures
like family dogs,
little girls sell World’s Finest Chocolate,
a regular Jeff knows these things about our Pic Quik:
s(he) who drinks 2 eighteen packs of Coors every day,
a couple of rent-a-cops, a praying mantis, some grandmas
with hidden wombs pregnant with aspirin and green
chile aromas. Gather at

half-time outside a windy place
across the Rio Grande
but still in Crossroads City,

where only the hardy and dry survive,
nettled and spiked, poisoned
at an hour when recklessness is at its peak

and people crave beer
and the vicarious rush
(C.C. gets the idea into her head)

of watching teams of young women on skates
abuse each other for sport.

Hotdog Andy peddles his wieners
and a woman named Connie
uses her hips to cut in line at the cash bar as

Ms. Slammaho body-checks Barbie Bombshell
who skids across the pavement
on her rink-rashed ass.

Across the warm asphalt, pitched with
diamonds of plastic scrapped crimps
lonely boys howl at the cars streaming
to the pursuit of tomorrow –

Chica Crusher steps into a narrow
sliver of neon, skates over each shoulder,

falls into her sun tattered Passat
lolls in the endorphin ache of thigh
And ankle. The idea in her head,
A boon of neon and purple – shifting
into fourth, green scratches of acacia waving her way
down such long black snakes.
She will, she will.

I want to be there when you come-Echo and The Bunnymen

We’re only here to leave-Warren Ellis

‘Cause this is thriller, thriller night-Michael Jackson

They careen off each other like children, follow each other around like stray dogs, he thought. Wide hipped wondergirls of the roller derby. Something about the hips is what got him, eternally and primally female, Venus of Willendorf, Venus De Milo, now Venus De-filo, coming up the inside, knocking lesser women aside with a mere swish of her hips. Chica Crusher sends her airborne asprawl, all knees and spinning wheels. The forms are universally female, but the faces, it was the faces he was studying. Mezistaje, how a bunch of swarthy Spaniards, pasty faced sailors from Eng-a-lond, came here and fought and raped their way to making these fearsome, beautiful women. Standing there, doctored soda in his hand, he stared. What part of the faces were European, which part Indian? Didn’t matter. He surreptiously dumped more bourbon from his flask into the soda when he thought no one was looking. He was only here to leave. Like his ancestors. Like their ancestors. He’d been sleeping on friendly couches for the last couple of days, taking a leg stretcher before the last thrust to the Pacific. Onward, upward, get the hell out of here, he thought. It was Cruces, always Cruces, where freeways met, where wagon trains departed from, where Spaniards took their rest before shit, as they say, got real, out on the Jornada. Everyone comes here to leave Chica Crusher, Marauding Mestiza of the Roller Rink. I wish I was leaving with you. I wish you were coming with me—he pondered.

“Who is that guy, who slipped
bourbon into his Dr. Thunder,”
Connie’s voice interrupts the roar of
the game whistle, as Chica Crusher places
her bear-like hands on her hips before Barbie
Bombshell clocks her and Chica
Crusher’s stomach resists the floor
better than shoe grip.
She’s up again but with a grin;
Connie knew its contextual meaning,
“No this wench didn’t,” but Connie’s few
drinks misinterpret Chica.
“I better get Mr. Bourbon Soda’s
number before Chica crushes
him,” Connie tells her date—
a young holy brother who has
withdrawn cash from the ATM machine
for their Roller Derby’s admission to know
good and bad skin, with its
blemishes. He dismisses
Connie’s comment and play close attention
to jiggling things.