She drives as I fawn
at the steel
car(casses)
seemingly salvaged from
every year since
Henry Ford was broke and 45 –
not a yard scrapless:
I guess when your town is called
Plainview – you build yourself
a junkyard – “hell you know
I would.”
She speeds as I stare
down geometric rows –
wind turbines and cotton
planted in perfect
horizontals –
hot road mirages
drowning out hazy horizons
hiding cemeteries for sale:
I guess when your town is called
Whiteflat – all of the cows
face the same direction –
“magnetic fields, they
say.”
She brakes as we get
there – and I
thank her for the
seventy-five mile-per-hour
crash course in rust and gravity – and
proclaim my affinity for
North Texas – where old cars
and fat cows go to die:
I guess when your town is called
Poverty Hills – even the tombstones
languish, unchiseled.