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PAR T CherrylogRoad OffHighway 106 At Cherrylog Road I entered The '34 Ford without wheels, Smothered in kudzu, With a seat pulled out to run Corn whiskey down from the hills, And then from the other side Crept into an Essex With a rumble seat ofred leather And then out again, aboard A blue Chevrolet, releasing The rust from its other color, Reared up on three building blocks. None had the same body heat; I changed with them inward, toward The weedy heart ofthe junkyard, For I knew that Doris Holbrook Would escape from her father at noon And would come from the farm To seek parts owned by the sun Among the abandoned chassis, Sitting in each in turn As I did,.leaning forward As in a wild stock-car race In the parking lot ofthe dead. Time after time, I climbed in Helmets / I50 TWO And out the other side, like An envoy or movie star Met at the station by crickets. A radiator cap raised its head, Become a real toad or a kingsnake As I neared the hub ofthe yard, Passing through many states, Many lives, to reach Some grandmother's long Pierce-Arrow Sending planers ofblindness forth From its nickel hubcaps And spilling its tender upholstery On sleepy roaches, The glass panel in between Lady and colored driver Not all the way broken out, The back-seat phone Still on its hook. I got in as though to exclaim, "Let us go to the orphan asylum, John; I have some old toys For children who say their prayers." I popped with sweat as I thought I heard Doris Holbrook scrape Like a mouse in the southern-state sun That was eating the paint in blisters From a hundred car tops and hoods. She was tapping like code, Loosening the screws, Carrying offheadlights, Sparkplugs, bumpers, Cracked mirrors and gear-knobs, Getting ready, already, To go back with something to show Other than her lips' new trembling I would hold to me soon, soon, Where I sat in the ripped back seat Cherrylog Road! 15 1 Talking over the interphone, Praying for Doris Holbrook To come from her father's farm And to get back there With no trace ofme on her face To be seen by her red-haired father Who would change, in the squalling barn, Her back's pale skin with a strop, Then lay for me In a bootlegger's roasting car With a string-triggered 12-gauge shotgun To blast the breath from the air. Not cut by the jagged windshields, Through the acres ofwrecks she came With a wrench in her hand, Through dust where the blacksnake dies Of boredom, and the beetle knows The compost has no more life. Someone outside would have seen The oldest car's door inexplicably Close from within: I held her and held her and held her, Convoyed at terrific speed By the stalled, dreaming traffic around us, So the blacksnake, stiff With inaction, curved back Into life, and hunted the mouse With deadly overexcitement, The beetles reclaimed their field As we clung, glued together, With the hooks ofthe seat springs Working through to catch us red-handed Amidst the gray, breathless batting That burst from the seat at our backs. We left by separate doors Into the changed, other bodies Ofcars, she down Cherrylog Road Helmets / I52 And I to my motorcycle Parked like the soul ofthe junkyard Restored, a bicycle fleshed With power, and tore off Up Highway 106, continually Drunk on the wind in my mouth, Wringing the handlebar for speed, Wild to be wreckage forever. The Scarred Girl All glass may yet be whole She thinks, it may be put together From the deep inner flashing ofher face. One moment the windshield held The countryside, the green Level fields and the animals, And these must be restored To what they were when her brow Broke into them for nothing, and began Its sparkling under the gauze. Though the still, small war for her beauty Is stitched out ofsight and lost, It is not this field that she thinks of. It is that her face, buried And held up inside the slow scars, Knows how the bright, fractured world Burns and pulls and weeps To come together again. The green meadow lying in fragments Under the splintered sunlight, The cattle broken in pieces By her useless, painful intrusion Know that her visage contains The process and hurt oftheir healing, The Scarred Girl...

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