December 2018
Jeff Burt
jeff-burt@sbcglobal.net
jeff-burt@sbcglobal.net
I grew up in Wisconsin, and came to understand a car's engine most in winter, tinkering with the butterfly of a carburetor, starter fluid, a little flash, a roar, or washing my hands in the warm oil gushing from the pan in subzero weather. In strange ways a subject of a poem can often become about a car.
When Words Ran Out
She could not escape
trying to listen to his silence,
the sound of her own lips
closing like thunder,
the lightning between
horizontal strikes of her attempt
to animate him into sound,
his name often said twice
like jumper cables
to a dead battery
or paired paddles
of a defibrillator
to shock him into speech.
He often felt like he was walking,
an empty gas can at his side
rubbing against his thigh,
the distance on the isolated road
growing as he walked,
the little sloshes in the can
escaping as vapor
until the splashes stilled
and the crunch of his shoes on gravel
made the only sound,
the motor of internal
talk gone silent.
Like this, he was happy.
When Words Ran Out
She could not escape
trying to listen to his silence,
the sound of her own lips
closing like thunder,
the lightning between
horizontal strikes of her attempt
to animate him into sound,
his name often said twice
like jumper cables
to a dead battery
or paired paddles
of a defibrillator
to shock him into speech.
He often felt like he was walking,
an empty gas can at his side
rubbing against his thigh,
the distance on the isolated road
growing as he walked,
the little sloshes in the can
escaping as vapor
until the splashes stilled
and the crunch of his shoes on gravel
made the only sound,
the motor of internal
talk gone silent.
Like this, he was happy.
© 2018 Jeff Burt