My car- MY wonderful car
is no lifeless desert,
no sterile ER
pressurized with
filtered atmosphere--
It is an island,
whose reefs and sholes
gather the flotsam
of the midwest's
tidal jetstream,
a faithful home to 39th St.'s
shaggy, hung-over moths
and tripped-out hippie spiders
(who wave at me
slidding into the driver's seat
as if to say "Thanks for
lettin' us crash, man-
got a smoke?")
This, I take all in stride.
Unfortunatly, my car does not.
Despite my blessings of housefly husks,
mummified french-fries
and a large orange spot
under the seat
that has not lost
an ounce of stickyness
in over two years,
my car has gotten some form
of automotive leprocy,
resulting in various bits
of, oh, say muffler
or such
falling off
from time to time.
It was inevitable, I suppose,
that one day the windshield-wiper
would fall off too, so I wasn't surprised
when it did just that.
Investigating the remains
for a part
or model #,
I find only the words
"Made in China".
Now, I am fully aware
that China is an ancient
and far-distant land
that I cannot just call up
and ask for
windshield-wipers.
So I go to the closest place
I can think of
to China: WalMart.
Using my blind bat-senses
as the supernovic glare
reduces my pupils to pin-pricks,
I grab the first wiper
that says "Made in China",
throw money at a light
with a number on it,
peel the accumulation
of sticky children
off my pants
and flee back out into the lot.
The instructions say
"Click in place.",
and after fifteen minutes
in a sudden freezing downpour
I want to meet the person
that wrote it
and find a place to click him.