Black Velvet Elvis, or
Gas-Bar de la Nuit

The King grins down from the gas station wall,
benignant presence over the cash register,
blessing villagers and passing travellers
through cracked, grime-mottled, grease-streaked glass.
But other Elvises hang around the room, growing older
clockwise, from the fresh, dimpled rebel by the door,
to the worn and pudgy Elvis over the Coke machine.
That Elvis is the weight of the world incorporate --
weight he lifted from everyman's shoulder
on endless nights and took to himself, so great
that it rucks the nap of the black velvet
that bears him. And that Elvis cries, tears
brimming from sorrowing eyes, as he grasps
the cold metal of the microphone,
knowing what must come to pass.

Locals coming in to gossip or pay,
or just to ask for the restroom key,
talk in hushed tones: he was never really dead;
he was resuscitated miraculously and lives,
hiding and waiting until the world is ready
for him to stage a comeback. Rumours
of sightings percolate like the muddy gas
station coffee (everyone scans the tabloids
in the big food store down the highway,
past the ornate immensity of the church).
They trudge out over scattered gravel,
twitch-grass and dandelions to pee,
dreaming of a final long muscle-freeing
step off a Greyhound bus to the Land of Grace,

barefoot pilgrims floating on bluegrass
to the shrine of the man who knew the thrill of their love,
who was more popular than the Beatles,
whom they saw crying in the chapel,
who sang the soundtrack to their lives.

At night the gas station draws small swarms of boys in tight jeans
to its bright, wide windows.
They drop change in the Coke machine
and take the bottles across rue Principale
to hang cool against the square, flaking wooden pillars
of the darkened general store. Behind them loom
dim presences of leather-palmed work gloves,
sun-faded overalls, fly-specked skillets.
Elvis watches them study the rolled cuffs
of their jeans, as girls in threes and fours flounce by,
giggling. The glowing ends of deep-drawn cigarettes
play bass to a syncopated falsetto doo-wop of fireflies.
Across the street, a clapped-out two-tone Chevy
with primer-covered body panels guns its motor.
Behind it, sequins on Elvis's jacket glitter.