Street Level Uncertainty
This is Frank Ocean
running out of gas in the Lexus
he remembers having before you were even friends,
before it was a big deal,
before the vintage BMW or the white Ferrari whiter than blindness—
it is often easier to make eye contact with a car,
looking through the windshield as if you’re introducing yourself
to yourself.
Sometimes it is easier to care about a car because it belongs to you, carrying you around as if it’s caring for you,
like a kind of sincerity attached to resentment,
fancy cars are even easier,
honestly I think people who pay attention to cars aren’t even sure what they really care about,
as if they’re caring about something they don’t care about at all,
that’s the real problem,
the one you get in your car and drive away from.
Even better than a car is a car in orbit,
even better is a Lamborghini in a McDonald’s drive-through, Bugatti with stretch marks orphaned like a mother ship,
turning up the volume,
it’s the kind of uncertainty you feel when you’re not even sure where you are.
Or is uncertainty the super-pure heart that doesn’t touch anything?
Of course you can eat in a car in a drive-through if you like, you can consume a car, you know you can,
you can swallow a car if you need to,
if something is missing
you don’t even know what’s missing—
face it,
there are times when you get in the car and you don’t even know which way you’re facing,
you call it your “sense of direction.”
Peter Leight has previously published poems in Paris Review, Partisan Review, AGNI, Western Humanities Review, Cincinnati Review, Seneca Review, The Southampton Review, Cimarron, Hubbub, and other magazines.
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