I just wanted to ride the thing, not toil
curbside, wrenching on a stripped-out bolt –
bowing on blacktop, pledged to a mystery cult
of grimy devotion – when it broke, and tranny oil
loosed down my arm, warm, gloving my wrist
in metamorphic ooze, that whiff of hell
spun through her gears, a dirty Zinfandel
of shifting struggle, and I could taste the schist,
the underworlds in her. To keep it running –
this iron mistress weeping from her seals –
it’s steady work: but paid off in delight
when her frame shimmies between the legs, gunning
the empty highway in black unspooling night,
and she surges, takes me with her over the hills.
Send Letters To:
The Editor
London Review of Books,
28 Little Russell Street
London, WC1A 2HN
letters@lrb.co.uk
Please include name, address, and a telephone number.
