Ode to Parking Lots

I’ve spent my life in parking lots
inhaling yellow-line residue.

Stark simplicity. Arrows 
pointing into angled sweet spots. 

Sticky stains of spilled drinks 
and flattened cans that once 

contained them. Carts blown into 
aimless dance by wind and subtle tilting.

No place is ever flat enough. I've spent 
my life in parking lots, admiring the grid. 

I have parked and un-parked. Checked
mirrors and over my shoulder.

Late nights, I love being the only one, 
docked parallel between yellow lines
in that dark sea under high fluorescence,

idling as the day’s hot tar cools
around me. No doors slamming.

No trunks slamming. 
No slamming. 

JIM DANIELS

Jim Daniels’ latest poetry collections include Gun/Shy (Wayne State University Press) and two chapbooks, The Human Engine at Dawn (Wolfson Press) and the forthcoming Comment Card (Carnegie Mellon University Press). His new fiction collection The Luck of the Fall (Michigan State University Press) will be published later this year. A native of Detroit, he lives in Pittsburgh and teaches in the Alma College low-residency MFA program.