I am driving around the night
in a pickup truck
with no lights in the dash.
A 70 mile-per-hour egg, and I am its yolk.
Or maybe not 70. Without illumination,
how to reckon one’s own speed?
—wind like spinning tires carving ruts in my hair.
—skin peeling back,
one indiscernible layer at a time.
No. That was someone else’s story.
I was the tire jack wrapped in cloth, content
to lie with the lug wrench in the hold.
A case of flares, fuses unlit.
The pair of yellow eyes mounted up front, not
vision enough for secondary roads
like cindered carpets rolling out ahead.
All around me was crackle,
transpicuous shell
I might have accelerated straight on through.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 16, Issue 3.
Nancy Carol Moody lives in Eugene, Oregon, and is the author of Photograph With Girls (Traprock Books). Her poems have appeared in The Journal, Salamander, The New York Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review and Nimrod. Nancy can be found online at www.nancycarolmoody.com.
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