Scrappers

Tex takes a long drag, spits, and looks through
his mirrored sunglasses at me. "You look
just like my daughter. She has bangs too.
I wouldn't let her around all this broken glass
and twisted metal."

Do you want some bread pudding?

His son takes a longer drag and tells Tex
to shut the fuck up. I drew a cartoon of
you with the paint pen I carry on the
crushed hood of yet another
Camero. It was hard to make out, but it was there,
much to Adam's amusement.

We stripped down the Corolla, and I
learned that the batteries die if you leave
them on the ground. Something about the gravity
of the situation or polarity or
something- you never really can be sure
what the fuck those men is talking about.

I learned that there is a beer nebula,
and that your motorcycle chain is too
tight if you can't fit three fingers
in the gap. I learned that
Tex feels the same way about women.

I learned that all the scrappers in town
like to see my ass when I crouch
with my secret weapon, forcing
cars to abandon their tires just
like the title holders abandoned them.

I learned that through the dusting glass,
if I look in enough cracked windshields,
I can piece together your face
and in the sound of the saw when Mose
cuts out the cat, I can feel that beat I memorized.

I hope that the next time you smell
engine oil you will think of me.

He drinks from a flask, pulls me in for a
hug and calls me the angel of vehicular
genocide. I have to agree. I've seen more
cars to their death than coroners see
drown victims.

Somewhere in the Whit, the dogs are
barking, and I look up to see a moon
in the blue February sky.