By Emile DeWeaver
We play
chicken where the brave
stay the course. Frames will twist,
wrap each other in fuck-mad
embrace. No, not
play—too old, too
practical, for games.
We speed each toward
the other, hearts pecking holes
in our chest. She’s gonna
drive through my windshield.
Or, or, or
I’ve driven this long: clouds
hail self-delusions and wishbones
and nothing’s left/right
for us but greasy thoughts
while I’m not-playing
chicken with myself, mad-dogging
the end of the dot-dot
yellow line. Elsewhere she
parasails [insert horizon]. Mash gas
pedal; RPMs shake
me till my lines blur
but, but, but
either she’s laying
rubber down this highway
and our chassis shall become
one, or I’m sailing down
this hot strip till it’s cool, blue
curtains with buzzards thin as pen
strokes slicing the sky. I’m
so, so determined it’s cruel, cruel.
Cruel like once upon this future:
if I changed course and put
the curtains in my
side view and drove one
city over, I’d not see her.
And I’d live
with knowing she’s
not not not coming
because she wakes daily
deciding that’s the life
she can’t live without.
So I crash/So I sail.
Emile DeWeaver is a columnist for Easy Street Magazine and a 2015 Pushcart Award nominee. He is a member of Prison Renaissance, a group of incarcerated artists who through artistic expression experienced a rebirth of the humanity they once lost. These writers, artists, journalists, and stage performers have dedicated their talents breaking the cycles of mass incarceration.
