Natty Light
by Renz Iurino
(for O.)
I’ve got a friend from west Des Moines, his dad’s
a billboard lawyer. I send him pictures of the sign
over the road when I’m passing through. I know
the way now, too, head left on Le Fleur Drive, head
straight to the interstate, then east. We met up last
August to set up camp chairs on the lawn at summer’s
closing, yellow seeping thick through leaves onto our
forearms and backs, a heavy-handed warmth. He likes
listening to Jason Isbell and driving aimless and walking
to Almost Always Open alone after dark to get a 30-rack
of Natty Light, and waiting to be something someday.
He really always has been. Sitting here I can see him
flying down gold-bordered roads, and in my mind
it’s a drive that never ends and a pull that presses on,
do you feel it, too? he asks, his sunbroken hands at rest.
We look into the collapse above where a skein of geese
threads blue into violet. It’ll pass, I say.