if it had wings it would fly (36)

The bad guys roll

on ninety nine,

pass a flask

from mouth to mouth,

the color line

dissolved,

united now 

in red hate and desire.

Blasting past

the Giant Orange drive-in,

the highway expansion joints

click like a stick

dragged across

a picket fence. 

They wait impatiently at

the red light signals,

the late night torpor of

the sleeping valley towns.

Smith spins the cylinder

of his Colt .38

and Bobby pats

the razor in his coat.

Five miles east,

two brown women

and a white man

bound by the bonds

of love and blood,

fly up the back side roads.

dead flat past the airport,

dead flat past the oil fields,

at a dead one hundred

miles per hour.

trying to make

two sides of a triangle

shorter than the third.

impossible in geometry,

achievable in time,

with a dry lakes racer,

a dash of virtue,

and a bucketful of luck.