The North fell off each hundred miles or so
in chunks of slush from the bottom of my car —
Spanish moss’s cousin, twice removed.
There was a transmission on the back seat
I took to naming Fat Man.
If I slammed
on the brakes you put an arm out to protect it
from lurching forward. Then I called it
Little Boy.
There was an old Jag chassis waiting for it
in the South, near Wilmington, an ocean
town with boiled peanuts.
It was part of my brand of neurosis
to game my metaphors, leaping from nuclear weaponry
to organ transplantation. Thus,
I dreamed of an uncle
saved from certain revenance
by the heart of a teenage biker.
Thoughts like these on the road
made me want to hold your hand.
The motel was unrelenting in its hunger to become
one of the trucks and take the highway
somewhere else.
In the days when we
sometimes mated twice. In the nights when
I asked you would you make me a star
and you said yes and then said porn.
And now the car and its transmission
are together in some lot on twenty-two,
so old they get exemptions for emissions.
Your hand’s still rough and warm
and everything to me. Magellan’s flat world
on your palm, hobbit-fur on every knuckle.
Photo By: rno
