polytheist

frayed ends of the immigration of
morning lay oily and sheer on the surface of my
irrepressible cup
of bustelo like rainbows in car wash puddles rendering
Monets reflecting nailbiting customers

the car wash was a strange and exhaustive period
every morning I would suit up in coveralls and pick up
breakfast for the boys
Nick was an affable wiry italian crewcut who would
strangely and eagerly feed me cigarettes every day
i think we were the only smokers on staff and he was
convinced of developing a shameless bond based entirely on this fact
Looking genuinely happy to fund me with
weightless obligatory Parliaments

the other main guy was Maja
he was a Haitian guy who worked
harder than anyone else
i tried to shadow his confident movements
i didn't really know how to drive but
he taught me some quick maneuvers
and shared the basics of his scrappy quasi-religious philosophy
and i traded with him in the currency of english slang and
looked over his homework from business night school

every morning I would suit up in coveralls
except
when it rained

i became a true pluviophile
sharing a studio apartment with three other
hungover seekers at
5:45AM i was concocting strange
birdlike ritualistic dances winged by
the blanket i slept on the floor with
i would sing and crow and wake people up
make odd exclamations at the balcony
pray to my half-remembered jewish god or
any available and
yank at my hair

when it rained the carwash was a ghost town and
my fuckhead of a boss would wait for us to call in
equally happy to be told to stay home as he was
happy not to pay us shit for the day

some mornings the sky teased which only
produced a more intense
almost sexual display
invoking any and all unknown religious techniques and
promises and
some mornings the sky was pitilessly clear and
i hopelessly mumbled and murmured and eventually
just left
defeated to my long walk to Woodside

on a good day we barreled through 200 cars
primarily taxicabs
if the drivers were Jamaican there was a good chance
to save some decent roaches from the vacuum snake or
sometimes we'd pilfer the change we found if it
was a few bucks worth
we couldn't rely on tips because the fuckhead very
obviously curbed at least half of them
either him or the scumbag bastard who had
funded the enterprise and liked to kill time
there relaxing
fucking with us and
scrutinizing our work

one time he clipped me behind my knees with the
hood of a moving car almost
dropping me on my face on a post-inebriated
morning
i turned around and saw him laughing in
the driver's seat the
exact way a
fat useless piece of shit laughs when his day is spent
fussing over his little pet project and not doing any
work and i swore up and down i would get his number and
obviously never did

the only other thing of worth i remember was
driving a nice car onto the rails and hearing
one of the most horrible crackling sounds i had ever
heard
i had jammed the tire at an odd angle
which caused
the hub cap to press against the metal rail and
shattered the plastic metallic disc into a million
pieces all
sent skittering down the grating with the hose and
quick thinking
the fuckhead saw it but hid his shock from the customer who
was looking at a kiosk with those little airfreshening tree things
i could feel myself getting fired a spooked yet almost sweet and
gratifying moment but
fuckhead kept it together and waited carefully
the customer never noticed it and drove off with three
hubcaps and the fuckhead never mentioned it

it was one of the jobs where you learn to drink coffee
learn the hot smell of a set of sweaty coveralls that got
washed once a week
memorized the faces of junkyard dogs that crowed a welcome
daily

it was also one of the hardest jobs of my entire life
on that weird stretch of queens boulevard absent of all
life not compelled by no-tell motels or auto chop shops
coming home at 10PM it felt like the world had ended and
i would call my girlfriend from a payphone on the way down
the street and
-mind emptied and muscles expired-
not have a single fucking thing to say to her and
have a stupid brainless chat before hanging up and walking
the mile and a half home

the only thing i think i learned from that job is
how to
purely and ignorantly
commune with many gods