In the Night Time Car

Dark and spacious carriage–
architecture splits before me,

chunks of wood floating in green pond.
Summertime was a memory

I ate like strawberries
behind the wheel. Sticky khaki shorts

and burnt-out suns
encapsulate the void

closing in: a blood pressure monitor
on my pale and hairless arm.

 

(originally published in Eunoia Review, Winter 2020)

Driving in Loops to Enterprise

We cruised Penn Avenue as compliant
vagabonds to the parking garage train

station to deposit/withdraw rental cars
in other people’s names. For a long time

I believed if you drove the actor’s maroon
luxury vehicle, you’d become the moon

yourself, at long last a god you believed in.
Being one who has to drive it to where it

must go, I know by now you will guide
its hand back to beneath the famous blue

bridge in the strip. You will sit at your desk
in the grainy film of your dreams and sketch

the rumblings of this world until golden hour.
The sun, then, will gift upon you ultraviolets.

 

(originally published in Confluence, Spring 2020)