somewhere outside of Tunica, Mississippi
So we wondered and I guess it was only for a few seconds as she was at a pay phone in the rain or was it the wetness of the neon lights' drizzle, with some semi-anonymous city expressing itself as a few antebellum mansions adorning deep green hillsides in a distance of storm grey with bright yellow ties of occasional lightning strikes in a further distance, the place we were trying to get to before sunfall, while I was getting high off gas fumes filling up our old beater of a car, picnic blankets and a dog in the back, yesterday's parking ticket wet-stuck to the window, phone number of a friend taped on the dashboard awaiting our arrival to be dialed, beers chilling in his refrigerator, shrimp and chicken awaiting the limelight of the grill, the photo album of him and his beautiful wife's recent trip to the Big City complete with an unexpected "art photo" section featuring her, or shall we say, her naked body as the object of contemplation/desire, and how this left his (male) friends feel, especially those without current girlfriends (on long shot southern nights without the luxury of air-conditioning), while the two of us, three counting the dog, had thousands of miles down the pike to an oasis in the desert they call Las Vegas, staring us in the eye and nowhere not even the remotest bit familiar to park the car off the freeway to get comfortable for a yogic dip into the waters of ecstasy, so what we did as we drove white line hypnotrance miles upon miles state after state (of the same state) resplendent with road ravaged flat tires upon flat tires and armadillos smooshed in their helmet bodies and described what we'd do to each other right then and there if we could and it was either the rain or sweat that kept her hair wet, the dog panting, and my big toe placed firmly on the gas pedal speeding towards a wreck we would invariably, or at the last second, hope to miss.

PHILIP KOBYLARZ is a teacher and writer of fiction, poetry, and essays. His creative non-fiction collection All Roads Lead from Massilia is forthcoming from Bequem Publishing of Adelaide, Australia and his book now available from Brooklyn's Lit Riot Press is titled A Miscellany of Diverse Things.