I hold my breath
driving between the empty auto plant and cemetery
where two maples rise over the gates
like giant lungs the invisible
engine shakes the wheel as the prison’s cyclone
fence goes racing by
my cigarette’s a minor firework
in the rearview mirror the tailpipe coughing
up black blood
I don’t give a fuck
I just adore the crack and hiss of opening
a beer aiming the old four-banger
at the mountainous clouds
looking for another place to wreck
[from Dirty Bomb, Oberlin College Press, 2015]
Photo by Tyler Sprague