Riding Shotgun
Aug 28 2022
No room up front.
No riding shotgun.
The passenger seat
with its usual clutter
of cast aside junk.
Coffee cups,
scraps of paper, crumpled-up.
A petrified sandwich,
soiled wrappers,
a half-drunk can
of flat brown soda
rocking back and forth.
So how odd was it
that he kept his house immaculate,
dressed fashionably,
fastidiously combed, trimmed, brushed.
Not to mention flossing.
The compartmentalized life.
How we carve out privileged spaces
reward ourselves with licence
learn wilfull blindness.
And he didn't mind
the messy car,
obliging friends
to ride behind.
The failed jobs
neglected kids
abandoned wife.
But still, he did well
keeping up appearances.
And from the outside
lovingly washed and waxed
you couldn't tell
the car might very well
be a hazard to human health.
I watched
as he adjusted the rear view mirror
to bring me into view.
The mirror
smudged with fingerprints
he never turned on himself.
An unusual origin story for this poem. I rarely remember my dreams. But this morning, I woke up from a fitful sleep in the middle of a dream in which I was writing a poem that began as this one does. I distinctly remember the series of “a” rhymes my dreaming self thought very clever.
So, later in the day, I thought I'd carry on with it, not having any idea where it would go. Which, frankly, is how most of my poems are written. Like a lot of writers, I don't really know what I'm thinking until I write it down.
Still, this one's a puzzler. Because the character here isn't me, nor is he anyone I know. I never eat in the car, and abhor sweet fizzy drinks. No wife or kids, never been fired. And if I'm anything, I'm too introspective and self-critical: not just looking into a mirror, but placed between two of them, looking down an infinite series of smaller and smaller selves.
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