Gregory Scott Gentry II
Rain tastes like runoff from a shuttered plating plant.
Someone on the feed calls it “liminal” and gets a thousand likes.
Rotors carve the sky—drones, choppers, maybe God.
No one looks up.
Glass doors sweat with stranger-breath.
A nickel in my palm holds the day’s heat and none of its wages.
Inside, coffee is axle-grease black, bitter as the unpaid hour the spreadsheet thanked.
Floor sugared with packets and road salt.
Ceiling sweating; brass pipes hiss like a slumlord’s apology.
This place is dying. So are we.
Online they call it “industrial charm.” It rents by the night.
Corner table: three men carved from overtime and backpay.
Coats gone shiny, cuffs pinned with red thread.
A five-point star pin rubbed down to a scab.
Cup handles turned left—code or habit.
Fingernails rimmed with coal. Mustache nicotine-stained.
One eye milky, one knuckle split. Not style. Damage.
A matchbook cracks open—ink of clasped hands, solidarity as logo, fading to bone.
They light up like the lights won’t go out.
Their talk is ugly, specific, unpaid.
Rent. Surplus. Bosses. Gravity.
The probate judge on Forty-Second with the embalmed smile.
The sedan that still smells like the accident even after the detail.
Hope doesn’t come up.
Tap. Tap. Tap. A spoon on ceramic, keeping time because time won’t keep us.
Steam fogs the window. A crescent drawn, wiped, drawn again—nothing to say, still saying.
On my screen, the thread preaches—villain, receipts, fix, repeat—
a sans-serif PDF with a rainbow fist sweating under my thumb
while the matchbook ink flakes into my lap.
Feeds flood red banners, color-matched to bruises;
in the diner, somebody passes a hat.
Their pamphlets gleam; their podcasts hum.
The real ones are still on strike.
Their lingo is a cough and a timecard; their panel is plywood on a picket line.
I filmed the spoon, posted it, watched grief fetch hearts. I deleted it. Too late.
I thumb my cup. Grit sticks.
Newsprint stains my palm. So does the phone—same residue, different slogans.
I’ve been informed, engaged, mobilized.
Rent past due. Data plan paid.
The old man turns his cup left without looking.
His pin disappears into the coat; the hole shines like an accusation.
Lunch pail under the chair, handle chipped, honest.
Their notes in pencil, on paper, with margins.
No archive. Memory and a coat hook.
Grease smears my sleeve. Sugar crunches and stays broken.
A fly drowns in jam. Just death.
Someone coughs into a napkin; the napkin fails.
The percolator knocks like a man at a locked door no camera sees.
Outside, wind skins posters from brick.
NOW HIRING. ALL SHIFTS. NO BENEFITS.
A truck backfires. No flinch.
Drywall dust, road salt, gunshot residue—pick your powder.
Riot gear is the cops’ bored Saturday uniform.
A laugh tries not to cry.
A cigarette end is saved like medicine.
I make a short list to fight forgetting:
axle-black coffee; left-turned handles; red thread; star scab;
ink under nails; onion breath; grit in teeth;
the sermon’s shape without a god; the revolution’s outline without the organs.
Where I’m from, they call it a thread, a show, a brand.
Here, it’s paper sweating on a table.
No SEO, no followers.
Just a bruise that won’t fade on command.
They say the fix is coming, one paragraph away if I clap hard enough.
Clap for the platform. Clap for the plan. Clap until the algorithm salutes.
The percolator keeps knocking. No door opens.
I finish the cup. The grit stays. I bite it once.
I pocket the matchbook. I tear a poster from the brick; beneath it, an older strike notice, still holding.
Outside, the headline hasn’t changed: WE’RE BUILDING A BETTER FUTURE.
I spit black into the gutter. It looks right.
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