Ars poetica

•

The note from the editor says—
send new poems
when you have the chance
and do mention that these
were a near miss-
they made it to the final round.

Oh yes, like driving all night from Lakeville
to Kiss My Ass, and stopping often
to throw another quart of oil in,
you know, smoke billowing out—
like that time you picked up a hitchhiker
near the Indiana line,
a tower painter who'd worked
all fall painting steel towers with mitts,
a hundred feet up, he said
and two buckets strapped to me.
All night you drove him west, until you hit the snow
in Iowa.

You can't drive all night into snow country
west of Dubuque
without thinking of the things
you learned from the road—
how to feather the gas
to keep the carburetor from icing up,
how to ease into the long straight-aways
and keep your eyes focused.

You paid for your mistakes,
waiting in semicircle
the sting of a calloused palm against your neck,
reciting the words carefully
—a slow steady pressure to the rear
until the sear is engaged, the trigger
released.

After you've been hit enough
you stop blinking,
The road led out
of the labyrinth of days
you called your childhood,
out of the near miss
and frightened screech of tires.