From my Car

I climb a hill that’s more
Mountain, one where

I don’t see people
Farther than me
Until I struggle

Past the top,
In the momentum

Of a silent meteor,
The same route where I died,

Where it was narrow
And frigid. A woman
Suggested I get out

And push my car up
Despite the two-ton car
Flattening me, and another

Offered to manhandle my car
Despite the two-ton car
Castrating him.

And there were more people
With wait-a-minute-bush-
Thorn fingers, wait-and-see,

Eighteen eyes behind three, a waitlist
In their cars with weightless
Music despite the two-ton car

Waiting for the other shoe to drop
That would shatter their windshields
And ripple and domino

Effect their music
Into the street below.
But who dared to move

Up that hill met
The sky-high tow truck
Which made them reverse,

And its man had me
Recuse myself from my car
And swear I would leave it

If it didn’t run again, and I didn’t
Run away from it.

ξ

Prince Bush reads poetry for TriQuarterly and lives in Nashville, TN. He was a Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets fellow, and he graduated from Fisk University as an Erastus Milo Cravath Presidential Scholar.