Bus Graveyard

Still you can see the blue under the nose
below Dia de los Muertos eye cavities,
glassy shine long splintered, littering
the dressing room to the afterlife
like the left-behind glitter
of a Bollywood star.
Though piled as if in a mass grave
the huddled shells seem content to lie close
to those alongside whom they served,
blaring and jostling along the same potholed roads,
enduring the same smears
of left-behind bubble-gum,
the indelicacies spewed
when the ride was rough.
Stripped now of muscle, stripped
of the power and strain of constant movement
they are still, left
to rust in peace.

After the photograph by M. Reinhardt titled “Rust in Peace.”
www.panoramio.com/photo/11596653

First published in Zocalo Magazine, December 2014
http://www.zocalomagazine.com/december-poetry/