Love Letter Written While Speeding Past the City Limit Sign
       

Four summer months of third-shift factory eyes,
the half-assed hurdler's scabbed-up palms and knees,
the Levi's/flannel uniform, the prize
collection of Star Wars toys, the Pekingnese

next door you shaved for fun, the baritone
vibrato you'd start belting out to shut
me up mid-fight, the slice I gave your collarbone
the night you wrestled me and won. We cut

the Mustang loose on backroads liquid black,
the windows down, your hand on mine on the stick,
and somewhere in the rearview mirror's crack,
the fragments give a wicked view — the quick

blood rush, the touch, the bliss of skin on skin,
the thick dark hours of swollen heat, the thin.

Copyright © 2009 Carrie Jerrell All rights reserved
from After the Revival
The Waywiser Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission