Title: Dream Car

Author: Donna Tusiata Avia

In: Sport 27: Spring 2001

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, October 2001

Part of: Sport

Keywords: Verse Literature

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Sport 27: Spring 2001

Donna Tusiata Avia — Dream Car

page 132

Donna Tusiata Avia

Dream Car

I am dreaming a used-car life
a big 1950s bird
with something American
scrawled in chrome across the back

a car salesman slides in beside me
without even opening the door
and I turn around and look
at the back seat stretched out behind me
like a tennis court
or a cemetery
I drive on making mental notes
about space and what to do with it

the salesman traces numbers in the air
and then of course I notice
what he isn't looking at:
bruised doors
panels soft as cheese,
steering wheel that drives you
to mercies of butter made like steel
he bares his teeth and tells me
not to worry eighteen hundred
will be just fine

and you hear yourself scream the names of saints
that up till now
have taken
no interest
in you
at all.