Poem: March 9, 2019

And Now I Drive a Minivan 

My early cars were real adventures,
a rogue's gallery of handed-down junkers
making their final stops before the tow truck
and the scrap yard. There was the yellow Nova
that my parents had driven across the country
and that smelled like wood smoke when I turned
the heater on in winter, followed by that red
1975 Ford pickup with the manual transmission
that was scary as hell if you found yourself
stopped at a red light on a hill- a half-ton
tank that was just as likely to roll backward
as to make it up the hill- but at least I learned
how to signal when the blinker didn't work,
how to duct-tape a leaky hose and how
to diagnose the puddles I left in the driveway.

The Mazda was my favorite and she hung on
for a while: long enough to enable my first job
delivering pizzas, long enough to haul my stuff
to college, and long enough to bear witness
to my first through fifth traffic tickets. Damn,
that zippy little GLC felt like an extension
of myself at 18, when in the summer heat
I would crank open the moonroof and slide
in a cassette- the fuzzy sound of the Police
pushing at the limits of the speakers, and
I had those fake switches that I bought at
Spencers that were labeled Ejector Seat
and Rocket Launcher and Booster Engines.

That was a car you felt like you were wearing,
less a vehicle than a pair of jeans, ripped
in all the right places and with pockets full
of empty bottles, cigarettes, books and old maps.
It's a dirty kind of love you feel driving
around in the uncertain teenage streets, and a car
like that will pull you places, race your heart.
The rattling power of the driver's seat feels
as solid and real as heartbreak, as consequential as curves.