Alan Shapiro

Roadkill

That moment when the brakes fail and the car fishtails skidding

while you grip the now moot wheel and brace for impact which the bracing

can’t prevent or soften

in a universe deciding for you just then on a fate that’s yours and yours alone

though everybody but you gets to judge it—the way that thud, for instance,

before the skidding stops

is already in the rearview by the time you feel it, the taillight-tinted-crumpled

body getting smaller as the wheel returns to being just a wheel your hands steer

and not the proof

or poof of something the suddenness both hints at and obliterates, your heart now

like a volume switch turning itself down to pound less in ear and chest

as breath slows

the farther away you get from what just happened until something like a steady state

is reached, an equilibrium that would feel indestructible, if you were,

as you were before,

entirely inside it, hands on the wheel at ten and two, eyes wide with seeing

nothing but the on and on of who you think you are, and were, and will be,

                                                                               but no it isn’t really that,   

that flash of the unthinkable you can’t quite shake, that even now is

dwindling to the melancholy entertainment of a mere idea or old song

of how we’re all forever

at the mercy of “what’er befalls.” It isn’t the shock but the aftershock,

as you drive safely off, of suddenly suspecting there is nothing at all,  

no harm, or loss, or grief,

no precious someone that this sensitive machine of you

can’t now be driven from, whatever else it’s driven to.

First Funeral

1.

You led us one last time  

past your building under

the upper story window

that only weeks before

I’d looked out of

at all the passing cars,

impatient, bored, wishing

I was anywhere

but where I’d been,

as always, made to go

“because she loves you,

that’s why!”—there  

where my only pleasure

was ignoring you,

pretending not

to notice how

my saying nothing,

never turning back

to answer if I wanted

something, wasn’t there

something, anything,

you could do for me?

only intensified

the racket of your need

to please me, to be pleased

pleasing me. “Can’t you just

for once just stop?”

I never asked,

although you answered anyway,

a few weeks later

as I rode behind you

at the head of that parade

of headlights slowly

passing far below

that window’s drawn down shade.

2.

The last prayer was spoken

In a cold drizzle that made

me shiver, and the shivering

wouldn’t let me picture

being down there

dead with you without

the chill still chilling

every part of me..  

3.

It‘s like my body even then

was this pre-talky sense-

projector jerkily projecting

onto the blank screen

of being dead the non-sense

it has gone on failing, ever since,

to feel the total blankness of.

4.

Because I never once

did turn around, because

your need to make me turn

was why I couldn’t turn;

because I kept on looking in amazement

at how many cars could pass

without me in them;

because you loved me,

that’s why, end of discussion,

and my loneliness

commanded yours

and made it lonelier

the same way

yours made mine, because

who’s left to say

I’m not the General McArthur

of our story, not retreating,

as I write this, but advancing

in a new direction,

just as when, after the prayers,

the tight ring of us broke apart

under black umbrellas

we collapsed and shook

the wet cold off of

before we got back into cars

and turned the heaters on

and as we drove away

through other kinds of traffic

rain stippled the outside

of the windshield faster

than the wipers slid

to clear it while the glass

fogged over with our breathing

as if to keep the chill

from getting in.