MILE MARKER [Verse 1] Caliche blows across the two-lane. A cattle guard rattles the chassis. Barbed wire tilts toward the borrow pit and the posts rot from the bottom up. Yucca bristles. Mesquite claws the fence staple. A jackrabbit breaks the shoulder and is gone. Alkali coats the trough. The pump is chained. The faucet is dead. [Chorus] Mile marker eighty-four. The asphalt continues. The settlement does not. Paint peels off the limit sign. Somebody shot the zero out. Mile marker eighty-four. [Verse 2] Radiator ticks on a grade. The spare is bald. The lug wrench is gone. The jack is seized. Coyote tracks print the borrow pit. A culvert coughs grit when a cloudburst misses and lands two counties over. Creosote reeks of medicine after storm that failed to enter the county. Buzzards ride a column of noon over a carcass the sheriff will not claim. [Chorus] Mile marker eighty-four. The asphalt continues. The settlement does not. Paint peels off the limit sign. Somebody shot the zero out. Mile marker eighty-four. [Verse 3] Shit, the motel ice machine died in March. The drawer bible is swollen sealed. Damn the billboard that promised shade and fried steaks forty miles beyond a grill. A chapel rests off the easement with a cooler tipped over and a padlock older than the pastor. [Chorus] Mile marker eighty-four. The asphalt continues. The settlement does not. Paint peels off the limit sign. Somebody shot the zero out. Mile marker eighty-four. [Verse 4] God is written in dust on the chapel pane. God is a bumper sticker mostly scraped off a trailer. The diner stools still spin. The grill is dead. Coffee cooked down into lacquer ages ago. A register drawer hangs ajar with a penny stuck to the tray. [Chorus] Mile marker eighty-four. The asphalt continues. The settlement does not. Paint peels off the limit sign. Somebody shot the zero out. Mile marker eighty-four. [Bridge] Fuck the brochure that sold this as scenic. Washboard ruts beat a spare out of round. The easement is a strip of gravel and bottle-shard and a shoe nobody matched. Arroyo dumps rock on the lane then acts as if the rock had always been there. Range cattle watch from the wire and do not notice who is passing. [Chorus] Mile marker eighty-four. The asphalt continues. The settlement does not. Paint peels off the limit sign. Somebody shot the zero out. Mile marker eighty-four. [Verse 5] A grain elevator looms at another settlement and does no business. Pickup idles. Pickup dies. A train horn somewhere east, then blank. The mileposts retain their figures even when the paint is gone. Eighty-four is still eighty-four when nobody is adding them up. [Final Chorus] Mile marker eighty-four. The asphalt continues. The settlement does not. Paint peels off the limit sign. Somebody shot the zero out. Mile marker eighty-four. The road does not explain. That is the count.
