first published in Bear River Review Issue No. 3 (online)
also published in the chapbook Night Duty
It’s a Chevy
but I want Cadillac,
need to find it on the map
of
and the dome light doesn’t work.
Funny how the headlights, too,
went on the blink at dusk,
making me twist a different knob
to avoid danger and traffic cops.
The trunk
has no keyhole, only a medallion.
I can’t open it at all.
The button marked trunk?
It’s all wrong, the remote,
like a spouse sleeping on a couch,
won’t obey my command.
Along Highway 131,
shoeless pickup trucks
rust away next to barns,
long removed from service
and the showroom’s Windexed glass.
I don’t find many find Cadillacs
halfway from
and along the way arrive hungry and late
at the Bob Evans restaurant.
A sign says wait,
while a white-haired waitress
counsels a waiter, young buck.
He gabs too much,
serves his pals extra Cokes.
The manager wants it to stop.
The waiter nods, repeats,
don’t gab so much,
retreats in my direction
with a menu, seems
just out of high school.
But I bet he could tell someone
it’s crackpot
not to install a keyhole
in the trunk of a Chevy.
Through turkey and cornbread
smeared with honey I want
to hear him to say,
No keyhole?
Some guy in a necktie
thought that one up…
He overfills my iced tea,
twice. I sense
he wants to rev, not rust away
like some have done. As I pay
my check and grab my keys, I need
to be right about that.
