Like a Prayer
Down on my knees
-- Madonna

Then, the letters sticking in your mouth,
you tell the used car dealer exactly what

color you’re looking for. We hold hands
under the tin awning, the rain buzzing

like a hive on fire. The engine of your
face turns to me, and I ask when you

can choke me again. You put your finger
to my lips, worried that the dealer will

hear us. I watch your new tattoo bleed
limp ink, and the tiger on your shoulder
closes his eyes, as if too tired to answer.

The Periodic Table of Car Crashes


in the heat, the temporary classrooms ping like empty oil drums
everyone's getting their learner's permit this year

how to doodle a black stallion using three different pens:
movies of people crashing and slides of what happens when people crash

this is called "distracted driving"

what a lightbulb feels like when it touches your wrist

the sounds the starving stray makes as you feed it your cheeseburger
on the back porch

this is what happens when you slam on the brakes

stolen Pabst in our thermoses at lunch, practicing how to
hold a cigarette, strategies for keeping our dads' hands off us

this is what happens when you don't signal

babysitting the neighbor's dog, watching it slip into the pool

this is what happens when you don't check the rearview

the last day of class we all sign a card for the teacher:
I'm not as think as you drunk I am

the bruises his sharp hips left on your thighs

this is what happens when you turn left against the light

the final quiz, multiple choice, ten questions:
writing, wish you were here
wish you were here
wish you were here
wish you were here
wish you were here
wish you were here
wish you were here
wish you were here
wish you were here
wish you were here

After the Accident


seatbelts hanging us upside/down
can’t feel my right wrist

still a little stoned on teenaged sex
and the fight about the cupholder

a branch nods through the windowshield,
the car ticking like a wind-up toy slowing/down

shattered safe-tee light in my hair,
I unfasten and fall to the ceiling

crimson and clover/over and over/crimson and
still on the radio

(you crawl as if you had lost something small)

a slow volcano bump begins on my forehead

leaves fluttering down from the tree
we crushed

voices outside

a shouting like children in sprinklers.

Didi painted a picture of me!



and I wrote a poem, again. I should show you the first draft -- it's so different, it's amazing. My mind tends to wander and things get weirder and weirder.
It's for a homework assignment for Joanna Furman's class -- a poem in one sentence. I actually did two of these.



At the Second Accident


I leave the engine running, the driver's
side door open, and I don't float --

I sink, the water not as cold
as I imagined, but brown and golden

underneath, filled with specks and slow
moving leaves and things that sparkle

and dart and I hear shouting and I'm
lifted by my ponytail and I'm out

of the water and you have your arms
and a blanket draped around me

and I think we're alone, but flashbulbs
keep going off, and I'm apologizing for

something I can't remember, and
you say, it's alright, that's what
credit cards are for, anyway.