Gregory Pardlo
Overheating cannot be blamed on a faulty idiot light.
The car in crisis, beached on the roadside and pouring
steam from its blowhole as you watch the rain melt
the windshield, the perfect screen for projecting a fantasy
dissolve that begins with your jalopy dropped from a barge
to be eaten by the reef like a dive site. An hour earlier this bell
jar hummed and clunkered as it sluiced through vacuum
tubes lining the riverbed from Manhattan to Hoboken,
the interstate peace pipes which lead to the suburban
drive-thru bank window where you hand-deliver your
savings to creditors. You think of self-sabotage: dirigibles
bursting the sky in newsreels over Lakehurst, flaming like
immolating monks. Our machines merely echo our bodies’
disposition: your desire for the tellers to leave their tanks
and swim to your rescue, pretty as new money floating
ghostly outside the car window as the last pockets of air
choke silent and the water closes gently over your head.