Jimmie Cumbie lives a few blocks from Lake Michigan in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago. His poems have appeared recently in The North American Review, Spillway, Midwestern Gothic, Meridian and Harpur Palate. You can find more of his work online at Muse/A, Cider Press Review and Boxcar Review.
80’s Body Shop Elegy
We kept the radio on all day long. The news came on at noon. Reagan, Nicaragua, Iran. Tommy brushed his fingertips over the freshly primed fender of another rust-bucket Monte Carlo, feeling for waves, bows, any imperfections in the once rotted places he’d filled and shaped with fiberglass resin. Next door, the whitewashed Lighthouse Salvation …