Narrative

A chunk of metal cubed and spat out

by a car-crushing bailing press, a Ford,

twenty years old, seemingly red, last

driven by a teenaged girl who’d failed

to check the oil, a gift from a doting

grandmother with a terror of squashing

squirrels recklessly crossing the road,

who drove the car only to church, after

buying the Ford at Ziggy’s, a used car lot,

when repossessed from a single mom

who had missed her payments till Ziggy

got cross, a woman working at Wal-Mart

whose former significant other left when

he decided the Marines were his best option

after all, but had picked up the car cheap

from a couple who liked energetic sex

in the backseat and were forced to sell

when the baby came, the spot of conception

marked by a stubborn stain on the fabric

the shape of Texas, and the upshot being

a daughter about to complete high school;

a couple that had first bought the Ford

from a soap salesman eager for something

faster and jazzier; all but the salesman

still engaged with the world, at times

walking past one another on the street,

or entering a diner, buying a few roses,

or riding a bus, a group not quite

a family, but who shared a memory

of faulty brakes, stuck glove box,

interior lights that rarely worked,

seven people, including Ziggy,

strangers intimately linked, except

for the soap salesman, the first owner,

an erratic driver, dead now ten years.