Freeway, and: Chula

Freeway

At night the driver in frontthrows a cigarette out the window            and briefly, while it’s still

            glowing on the wind,            I want to swerve,

how the cherry looks like the shining eyeof an animal that didn’t hear            us tearing down the road.

            I’m driving because            I am always driving

now that I’m old enough. My mother nods offunder the medication’s haze, but she’s here            mumbling the song on the radio:

            I can’t give you anything but…            Nothing in this great big world but…

            Years from nowher car will be found in a ditchbeside the white stretch of cotton fields,

and she’ll come to with a woman standingover her shouting

            She’s dead!            She’s dead!

            though she’s not. My mother will say she swervedas an animal crossed the freeway

but she can’t keep it straight.Raccoon one day, possum months later,            sometimes a cat—

and she can tell me this again and again,            grace being that an animal can change.

Chula

For Abbie Hoffman

Abbie, in the winters, we turned down the heatto save some money. We sold the young treesto make some money. In the summers,we picked the blackberriesuntil sweat filled the cuts in our handsand we snuck the fattest berries into our mouthsbecause at that moment we didn’t care about money.And we brought the dog’s body homein a great black trash bag instead of the specialdead-dog-sized boxes the vet had,and we saved a little money draggingthe bag across the lawn. And we tithedour ten percent every week. And we snuck foodout from buffets. And some of us went Northand some of us went West, but most stayedright where we were born. But we left, it’s true,and after we left, we actually did steal your book, Abbie,and we wondered why you had to be born in Massachusettsnot our Chula, Georgia,why you couldn’t have pilfered pickled pig’s feetinstead of canned salmon. How our worldwould be diferent if we had someonelike you to throwfists full of dollars into the local stockyardinstead of the stock exchange,if farmers and bulls trampled the bills.