Back on the Strip Monday morning for the expo
The top part of a slot machine is called a tombstone.
Six of us walk into the elevator
and watch each other's eyes
for signs of cognizance
like entering traffic.
The other driver hasn't seen you yet.
When I drive home at 5
the Mandalay Bay shines like gold leaf.
How ominous it looks now next to
the dark Luxor pyramid that I always
braintonguetwist into Lex Luthor.
It is a black cone of silence.
I walked in and out of the DMV 6 times
before I had my registration this year.
And every time
I was accosted and yelled at
by men who wanted my signature
on their petition to protect gun rights.
When my spouse and I take our evening walk,
a man shouts in the distance.
We go a different direction.
Mandalay Bay is a tarnished silver mirror,
impossible to ignore,
a salt lick grinding into Luxor's stone peak,
a constant reminder to gawking drivers,
a tombstone
over tombstones
over tombstones.