The Pump Out Truck Cometh

For all the obvious reasons there has never been

an ode to a pump out truck, never an eau

de perfume, but despite its grubby reputation

the one charging off the barge is a white knight

who gleams without being hosed off.

Out here, on the severed island, this truck

is a lifeline–if your septic tank quits

you might as well throw spoons in a blender

and call it Handel, or take a long walk with a wad

so long as you know what poison ivy looks like.

The day before the barge lumbers into our harbor

you would think several people had lost gold coins

in their yard, bent over rock-twanging shovels,

metal detectors, divining rods, muttering

how the earth swallowed lids like Tums.

After crawling on hands and knees last time,

knocking on dirt for the telltale hollow

of a sepulcher below, a man who knew something

about losing the same thing time and again,

lent me a marker, an unengraved headstone.

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James Lowell’s work was recently short-listed for the 2024 Fish poetry prize, and has appeared in the Canadian Review of Literature, The Caribbean Writer, English, Fortnight, O Miami, Martha’s Vineyard Times, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Orchard Poetry Journal, The Fourth River, and The River.