I drive a car
of irreplaceable parts
going south.
I crawl out of town at night,
a girl with a limp on my arm,
not knowing which belt
or hose is cracked,
leaking like a fistful
of fluids.
The headlights reach down
where the pavement
is supposed to be.
I have a feel for the tires
as they pitch
into the shoulder.
Then slowly guide them out and away
from the deeper ditch below,
hot with toxic runoff.
If a computer can get a virus,
then my car has asthma.
It gets winded at stoplights
like a chain smoker
who just finished sprinting uphill
to the hospital.
There is nothing my car needs
that isn’t lying
out somewhere on the dark road ahead,
at a gas station or rest stop
filled up with strangers like us.
We live one mile at a time
on boiled coffee and canned meat,
nursing overheated engine blocks
to speed our planned obsolescence.
by Greg Jensen
Greg Jensen has worked with homeless adults living with mental illness and addiction problems for the past seventeen years. In addition to being a poet, he is a dad, husband, and avid bicyclist who works on the Seattle’s original Skid Road.
