1-800-Jesus
on a bus billboard
silently tells my old man,
outside the Burger King,
that the halfway house can
snap a heroin needle in half.
But my old man
was too busy
picking dirt from his nails
drinking from a bag
chewing his bottom lip.
My old man was
in a dirty argyle sweater,
just another on a bench
that sizzled in the heat
like a dying
cigarette,
like singed fingertips
black with ash.
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