Phenix City

The vinyl bench seat, seasoned by decades

           of Armor All and rich-

running carbs, cooked. I sat there wondering

           what had happened

to Sin City’s missing o. Lord knows I’d never

           been east of Auburn

on my own. Just to appease Mom, I’d tested out

           the ’72,

but that’s how it happens. Next, you find yourself

           years later waiting

in a parking lot for Cutlass Ken, your parts guy

           for any make or model

of the poor man’s Cadillac. Across the parkway:

           the flashy raffle

of used car flags, a few bulletproof gas stations,

           and the bowed cab

of a semi with its hood hatched toward the river.

           A two-tone blue

dually rolled up alongside what remained of the ’72,

           lengthening

in my full-moon hubcaps. Without a look at me,

           Ken eyed it from

fender to fender, the oily curl of his ducktails

           and mustache dyed

black as the Looney Tunes T-shirt swallowing his arms.

           The dually gurgled.

He nodded after awhile, said to c’mon and I followed

           across a bridge,

a couple of miles, to what had to have been his place,

           then parked

in the grass behind him. Rows of Cutlass

           carcasses and parts

of Cutlasses sloped down to a kudzu-covered fence,

           and beyond that

the chop shop river wrinkled and winked. He’d get me

           good as new.

The sun slanted in, glancing off chrome and glass,

           the time of day

when colors by the Chattahoochee come most alive.

           Metals blued,

the ragweed blazed, the rust gave off its indigo

           of oxidation.

Mimosa saplings sprung from wheel wells and hoods

           burnished by use.

I could see the filigree of veins inside leaves

           and believed

for a moment, for years, those Cutlasses could rise.