We borrowed your car
to drive into town
Sister Laura and I (and she was driving)
on the way home from something at
2 a.m. –
you remember the way the old Dodge liked to stall
after you shut it down for a while?–
we had stopped at a train crossing,
barricade down.
Well, the bell shut off and the
striped bar lifted
and Laura eased the Dodge across the track...
then it died,
just as
an eighteen wheeler
loomed up behind us and
(a gutcrushing chill screwing down round my heart)
the clang and the flashing began
again.
I looked up to the cab of the White Freightliner
trapped behind us.
Our brake lights neoned the face of the driver
a local girl in
redlight
burlesque
panic
up in that high, soundproof chamber –

I got out and
ran round around back to push,
visualizing my legs
cut off clean in the wreckage,
jerking a last unfinished dance –

then the nightmare let go,
dissolving in dream death,
like the last sick lurch of a themepark ride
letting me down
screaming
still screaming
and my heart's mad punching
NOT NOW... NOT YET...

03/09/2010

Posted on 03/09/2010
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