Thomas F. Wylie, Cold Car

Cold Car

dark grey Oldsmobile
four-door dual exhaust
soft cloth seats
new car smell
red lipstick-stained butts
under the front seat
with newspaper rolled
half-pint
exposed
driver’s window open
taste of cigarette smoke
with rush of cold air
on a face of
frozen disgrace
sunken into
a back seat
that fights and meets
mirrored eyes
of hate

Vacant Lot

Another drive-by
They seem endless
and unavoidable
in our one-road town
How many car window views?
A thousand perhaps
I think it was 1982
when the house fell backwards
collapsed down the hill
into the creek
Your bedroom was in the back
on the second floor over
the unheated garage
In the falling
parts of it must have been
among the first sections to
hit the rocks and water below
We first lay down together
in that room on your bed
madly kissing and feeling
Lucky for us
your mother banged hard
on the door and shouted
“Knock-knock. That’s enough”
just as your hand touched my
breast, the first anyone
had ever done
Now, as I look again
there is nothing except
tall weeds, ugly piles of black-top
stones
an old tire and
nameless junk
dumped scattered and tossed
where the small two-story rented house
once stood and was your home,
for just a few years
A dreary ghost-like lot
as is my memory of you
fallen down
discarded