Down Highway 74
Down Highway 74
On the way back from Charlotte
there is a dead girl draped across the grass
beside the highway. She swarms
with policemen and one or two paramedics
who, for some reason, still have not
covered her or taken her away.
The highway is quiet. The truck ahead
of me barely chugging. A needy line
of traffic crawls past. Mothers
cover their children’s eyes, take in
all of the dead girl for themselves.
They check and recheck their seat belts
when they see—awkward as a giant,
poisoned insect—a small, blue overturned Honda.
The bottom of the car is a collection
of smooth, gray boxes and long, metallic
shafts that are only a darker gray.
“It’s electric,” my friend says.
“You can tell ‘cause its got no exhaust pipe.”
In my head, I tell my friend that seeing
the bottom of an overturned car
is like seeing a nightclub by day: foreign
for some unknown reason. Offensive,
as if we have just caught the world
in a malicious lie. A lie about everything.
Outside of my head, there is only the radio
speaking for me. The soundtrack
of “The Time I Saw the Dead Girl”
is driven by the drummer of Metallica.
He is angry. His drums are angry.
The guitars are angry. The vocals are angry.
It feels wrong. As opposed to what?
When it is our turn to pass, we are close
enough to see that the girl is blonde.
Not yet pale. Wrapped in a bloodless,
yellow sun dress. A silver bracelet hangs
on one thin, sleeping hand. She has long,
brightly painted lips. Thin, Hollywood lips
that make me wonder, “Where do I know her
from?” Nowhere, naturally. She is a dead girl.
A dead, blonde girl. A young, dead, blonde girl.
A young, dead, blonde girl lying along a highway
at the boot heels of investigators (or whoever
the men are). She says nothing. She goes nowhere.
She simply performs being a young dead girl
with dreadful accuracy. And a moment later,
the road opens, dark and broad and waiting.
The girl is gone.
“I want a tattoo,” I tell my friend.
“I want my name tattooed over every square inch of me.”
Appears in “Prick of the Spindle”
Taken from “We Call This Thing Between Us Love”
click to hear me read this poem
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