she will carry you
| back when cars had keys real ones the weight of them the iron scent of them in your palm your grandmother handed you a set of two GM stamped upon their widths a leather keychain that smelled like your grandfather years gone all engine oil & basement tools the styrofoam ball marionette he made with green tufts of hair like a peacock like a punk rock kid his old poetry books bought at yard sales with the scent of weather of rain of midwest humidity creeping in through the corn through the long grass that cuts at your feet these keys are yours now your grandmother with her new red ford taurus is ready to pass on this ‘79 buick lesabre in a color rather unidentifiable unless you are familiar with stick-on glow-in-the-dark stars & what they look like during daylight that beige-yellow with thoughts of green those wide bench seats covered in soft mud-colored fabric that backseat your college friends would want to make out in that car that took you wherever you wanted to go highways alone beneath violet mountainscape the endless whir so comforting you could almost fall asleep while driving sun heat across bare legs a fountain drink from the latest gas station perspiring against thighs this your only air conditioning driving into new mexico’s wide open airstream trailers like spaceships in the sprawl the open of land beneath mesa beneath endless breath of sky beneath the kind mothering vigil of moon this wheelspin this heavy metal of car carries you carries you alone across hours across the miles how you are at flight how it is not about any destination not about the friends waiting for you not about green chile burritos not about the laughter to come no it is about this in-between place this travelling this soaring above earth into sky this fierce solitude these hours separate from cities from homes the phillips 66 in springer new mexico with the rc cola machine the conoco with too many truckers & lukewarm coffee in walsenburg where you could exit to fall asleep at the edge of the sangre de cristos listen to the wolves & their aching song on refuge lands the salty hot fries in raton after descending the pass greasing the wheel as you drive along to your forever soundtrack you will name her rosie & she will carry you as long as she can |
| JILL KITCHEN’s work appears or is forthcoming in The Dodge, Ecotone, Hooligan Magazine, The Iowa Review, MQR Mixtape, The Night Heron Barks, The Penn Review, Poet Lore, Ran Off With the Star Bassoon, Tahoma Literary Review, trampset, West Trade Review, and Whale Road Review. Her work has been nominated for Best New Poets and Best Small Fictions. She lives in Washington, D.C. Find her on Twitter at @jillkitchen, on Instagram at @msjillkitchen, and online at https://linktr.ee/jillkitchen. |