Classic Poem

Through floorboard holes like open windows
on the road beneath my feet, through the back
seat windows that constantly slid down
as if cranked by invisible children, they came
for the mushrooms that grew in the carpet
lush from all the unrestricted rain, the diet of pink
liquid drizzle at the bottom of Pep Power cups
collected on the passenger side: roaches arriving
on their soundless fast feet, glossy palmetto
bugs big as a hand, and in the dark,
I always drove twitching, shaking my hair,
the overhead light burned out, music
stopped inside the radio of my 1974 Toyota,
and still she ran, the world's longest lasting car,
finally sold for a hundred dollars to a friend's husband
after he'd become lost in addiction to sex, contracted
AIDS , a beautiful man with blue jewel eyes, faceted
and cracked like ice, but perfect, a kind of sun dial,
with a brightness that made it hard to hear his words,
to do anything but nod. He drove my car so far north,
everything froze, and, covered in ice, in Minnesota
or Michigan, after years, the radio came on
like a person materializing beside him, and he called
his wife to tell her how he'd been driving, and someone
started to sing. He'd been scared at first, in the dark,
gone now, wherever the car has taken him.











From Poetry Magazine Vol. 187, no. 6, March 2006 used with permission