Author: Theresa Smalec

The title for Installment 20, “Beware the Beast,” is inspired by the visions of William Blake. The various beasts remembered here blur the lines between heroic and pathetic. They are flashes in the rear view of those broken, precious things that love resolutely tries to salvage. *** First car I bought was a ‘58 Ford, cost me fifty dollars, Three speed on the column, we called him The Beast: Already rusty, never had enough miles an hour. I loved that old hound, but he kept on breakin’ down, Lou and I spent two days just replacing the clutch: Already...

Installment 18 is Joel Long’s “Red Rambler,” a poem whose speaker travels the hypnotic road of sense memory. One minute, we’re driving along in the present, tempted to look over bridge rails at water; the next minute, something triggers and we take flight, returning to the sights, smells, and sensations of a past we can hardly know. And yet we do know it intimately. *** Red Rambler My brother left the roach clip in the sun visor in grandma’s car. Though I never use it, I leave it there beside mirror and compass sphere, egg which rotated in fluid...

Installment 17 is a white-knuckle meditation on luck and its aftermath. Leah Mueller’s two poems dramatize the strikes we never see coming, and invite us to feel those misses that were nonetheless very near.  *** METEORITE FROM SATURN The objects that strike from above are always the worst. Driving my Toyota Corolla down I-5 in a 9 PM Pacific Northwest rainstorm, a few miles north of Everett. Raining so hard I can barely see. Traffic like angry bees escaping from a damaged nest. Radio off so I can concentrate. Suddenly, the heavy crash of impact so loud the entire...

Installment 16 presents six short vignettes: snapshots of care and risk that resist our age of dehumanization. Stephen Brockwell’s speaker offers tender, chilling, and at times humorous glimpses into why certain drivers are willing to go the extra mile for their human cargo. *** A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Border Crossings 1 Phil, we remarked on your broad lapels. You were thumb-wheeling home to your brother’s funeral in a vintage three-piece you bought on the Main, black wool with satin piping better suited to a gala. It had seen more years than you, more than your brother. And so, we...