Driving to Mexico
With hot air blowing by,
The pillow case flap-flutters
To the hum of rubber tires.
A buzzing fly tickles,
Pink arms peel from hot vinyl,
Outside: pole…pole…pole...
Clear flames waver…rising
Over mercury pooling on the road,
As our car cuts through the desert.
This might be one of the first poems I ever wrote, and it's been through a number of revisions since. I was never that thrilled by it, but surprisingly I remember my teacher liked it quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteThe poem does come from several memories I have of driving to Mexico with my parents and siblings in our brown station wagon when we were young. It was in the days before wearing seatbelts was ever enforced. We used to climb all over that car... and we either didn't have AC or it didn't work very well, because there was always a window or two open, and sometimes when we moved you really did have to peel your sweating skin away from the vinyl of the seats. Good times.