Trevor Moffa


Always, hopefully, soon


Look at the Shell station,
gasless and cold,
the paint, like everything else,
pulling away, hungry for distance
and full of wind and loss once sated.
A shuttered truck stop
with signs a mile in each direction
still promising rest and yesterday's prices,
disappointed by rust, watching investment speed
past the weed cracked concrete foundation
behind a fence
and a for sale sign in disrepair.

Rust is hope having outlived reason,
the park in disrepair,
the fence around the park in disrepair,
the lock on the fence around the park in disrepair.
My whole life the miles long factory
a reddish ruin of metal not worth scrapping
and a disconnected segment of train track
on a weed cracked concrete foundation
behind a fence
and a for sale sign in disrepair.

People talk about money like they talk about memory,
and they don't talk about rust.
It's miserable stuff for conversation.
We sit at a hot dog shop with a reddish awning
under pictures of menus from the 1930s
when the same $3.00 dog cost a nickel
and talk about how once upon a time
there were more millionaires per square mile
a couple blocks over than anywhere else in America,
and the kids half listen because they're old enough
to know a mansion
from Blockbuster’s weed cracked concrete foundation
behind a fence
and a for sale sign in disrepair.

Rust is the bust after the boom,
hope having outlived the perceived value of hope,
the cockroach and the Twinkie at the end of it all.
For a dozen years a yellow sign with red letters
has promised, WAFFLE HOUSE COMING SOON,
and relatives from out of town,
or the lost who get off the exit looking for gas, will
misinterpret the weed cracked concrete foundation
behind a fence
and a for sale sign in disrepair,
and ask, When’s the Waffle House open?,
and I expect the reply is always, hopefully, Soon.

Trevor Moffa is a poet and former coal miner, park ranger, bookseller, and sandwich artist from Pittsburgh, PA. He helps as a reader for Chestnut Review, and his poems earned an Honorable Mention in the 2020 Francine Ringold Award for New Writers. Recent work is published or forthcoming in Nimrod International Journal, Chautauqua, Sleet, Sierra Nevada Review, and Midway Journal.

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