P.A. Jones

Backroad Beat 

They lit theirs in neon.
Beer sticking to the floor.
Ashtrays full.
God dragged out
and talked over.
Wrote it fast
so it sounded like truth.
Sirens outside.
Concrete holding heat.
Everybody watching everybody
try to become something.
They called it freedom.
—
Before sunup
outside Lincoln
gas station coffee
burnt black
truck idling
red clay still on my boots
no one here
to see anything
—
Tried the city.
Too many people
leaning into their own wreck
like it proved something.
Talking loud
so it wouldn’t fall apart.
Nothing held.
Just noise
hitting walls
and dying there.
—
Out here
sound either leaves
or it stays.
Lies don’t travel far.
Hit a fence line
and drop.
Screen door
long creak
then the click.
Dog down the road
barking at something
that don’t show itself.
I sit
and there it is again.
No place to put it.
—
They ran at fire
like it might change them.
Fire don’t change you.
It shows you
what burns.
—
Last winter
side of 78
rain coming down hard
tire blown out
trucks flying past
rocking the truck
hands numb
knees in gravel
jack slipping once
then holding
finished it
kept driving
never wrote it down
didn’t need to
—
Give me a line
that comes from that.
Not watched.
Not performed.
Something that stands
in an empty field
and don’t start lying.
—
Backroad Beat.
No stage.
No myth.
Just you
and what followed you out here
finally catching up
when it gets quiet enough
you can’t talk over it.

 

P. A. Jones is a Southern poet from Alabama writing out of blue-collar life, faith, and doubt. His work is direct, grounded, and reflective. Author of After the Silence; co-author of Searching for the Ghost of Hunter S. Thompson with Ron Whitehead.