The Eye of the Storm by Ron Gibson, Jr.: Poetry: Thunder Sandwich #17: Edited & Maintained by Jim Chandler and Haze McElhenny

I turned around to find one of the Twins staring me down with a scowl. I cheesily smiled and shrugged, as if to say, "Oops-a-daisy."

"You fucking asshole. The only stink you're smelling is your upper lip, loser," she said, then socked me in the arm with a hard right cross.

My arm stung like a bitch. I wanted to shake it off, but didn't when I heard laughter from above, mixed with the chorus of traffic. I looked up and saw it was Gunter—sunburnt to a crisp, leaning against his maintenance truck, arms folded, laughing his ass off. Anger instantly rose inside of me, red as his skin; but, instead of stomping on his face, I grabbed my trash sack, walked off a ways, with my arm throbbing, and acted like I was hard at work. Under my breath, I was swearing like a mute tourette.

But anger couldn't last forever. Once it fizzled out, the usual self-loathing took over, followed by the suburban, white boy blues. I was jonesing for a drink like a hooker needs cock. Time was against me; it was a big rig, hauling a transplanted house with an Oversized Load banner on its ass. The days of summer slowly unwound; our gulag in its final stretch, leaning into the finish line. I thought about how we would soon return to our lives and act like we didn't know each other when our eyes met in public. There would be, of course, that split second flash of half-panicked recognition, quickly followed by the Gee-My-Shoes-Are-Certainly-Interesting look downward. I imagined Jews acted that way towards other fellow concentration camp prisoners, after the war. They were reminders of their ordeal, evoking a feeling of humility inside one another. The only feeling Gunter would evoke inside me, if I ran into him in public, I thought, was a sudden, desperate need to shove my fist down his throat and rip out his vocal chords.

The thought only pissed me off, again. I didn't mind being on the wrong end of a joke, but to have Gunter laugh at the punchline, smug and content, was too much. There had to be a border one's pride refused to cross, and Gunter just happened to be the dopey guard on duty, asleep.

I stopped near the edge of the freeway, disgustedly threw down my trash sack, and stripped off my Day-Glo hard hat, vest, and gloves. My head was swimming with angst-driven visions. One, in particular, was of me reaching into my pocket, pulling out my unopened can of Coca Cola, and throwing it through the passenger's side window of a speeding Chevy pickup; followed by a screech of tires, a glimpse of Wyoming license plates, and a blistering hail of gunfire.

The commute moved with the swiftness of a river current, sounding like a mechanized vein pumping blood, sending my hair into a riot of directions. I reached down into my pocket, paused for a moment, and half-turned, looking back toward the crew. They were spread out in a staggered-looking formation, like the starting blocks of a long distance track and field event, as if anticipating the starter's gun, ready to run.