Sometimes I forget cars are people
headed someplace and not soft candy
in a steel wrapper—
in LA, say, where her car bakes
while we BBQ in Koreatown.
She was my lover
now she orders two meats and a lager
to split, but there come a peck
of pickles in dishes like boils
on a cheek, and we eat them all.
Curbside, she says she likes the hell
of a car left sitting. Sticky plastic
under glass-sharp sunshine—she sits in it
as long as she can stand. Crazy!
I know she drives the way a fish
in water swims—I mean perfectly
mindless. In the rearview, her blushes
are made of blood, I remember.