Car Trouble
I watch the engine start to burn
and I think of my old art
teacher the day he gave up
and stank of tar and tobacco
forevermore. His name
was long as all five fingers
of his right hand holding up a dove
his friend had stuffed. It started
with P. Never had I been
so excited about useless things.
I still can smell its feathers.
His fingers curled ever more
inward, like a child’s idea
of surrealism made real
by their own grasp of grief.
Once he spat upon a thing
I’d made, but I promise it was
glee. I never saw him paint Jesus
though he was so good at it,
it was a second source of income.
I’m sure I heard him sing,
even if I can’t recall his voice.
Rather, when I close my eyes
and listen what comes are
combusted scraps of red landing
in wet grass and trying very hard
not to end. Such abundance.
Soon to be invisible.
This is what you want, he said.
So much fire. So much wind.
