Jeremy Bass
This Sunday evening at 7:30pm, Mike O'Malley
Will drive his twenty-foot cherry-red monster truck
Over the blue discarded shells of 1980s Fords
From one end of a pitted sandy arena
To the other, each car beneath his ten-foot rubber wheels
Emptying like the failed hope of a former love
In a spray of glass and sand as the polished scrim
Of each flat roof folds to meet the stacked grid
Of chassis, axle, blown tires and frames beneath.
And we will watch together as Tim O'Sullivan
Lifts a giant black Toyota Fire-Demon
Over a pyramid of motorcycles once designed
So that people could leave one road of their lives
And emerge onto another at blinding speeds, just
A blur of metal, abandoned now, it will be like
They never existed, he won't even touch them.
Then finally Steve Spitzer will crush smaller monster-trucks
With his monster-sized monster truck, and I will turn and kiss you
As you have never been kissed in the Worcester Centrum before,
The wash of the crowd drowning to a dim simmer,
The warm parts of our bodies beginning to boil—
Love, we should be so lucky to leave
Before the show is over: me trying again
To set my hands to that part of you
That swings so invitingly, you
Pushing me off like the tailgater I am—
To coast out the wide gates of the amphitheatre
Of the wreckers and the wrecked
Into the night's black upholstery, where we will sit
And lock parts slowly, the way lovers were meant to,
While the sounds of the crowd, celebrating one
Last destruction, roar and cheer us on.