We're going across the whole country,
all the way to Boston, where there's another ocean

we'll swim in next summer. But we don't
even get to the dot my father circled in magic

marker on the ribbon of our trip,
when the car, teased by sun

playing at my window, loses
solid paved surface. The wheels

hiss as they spin
in air. I'm over here

in long grass by the side of the highway. My father
shouldn't be on the hood of the car, staring

at birds on a telephone pole. By her open door
my mother tangles elbows

and knees. Why doesn't someone
say something? It's cold

and I'm hungry. Click, click
the engine tries. Puddles force their way

around small hills of broken glass.
My father

moans. I turn away,
study the underside of a leaf,

breathe in, breathe out,
cricket in tall grass,

who rubs its hinged legs hard
to make that high-pitched plea.

I kept the shush of sprinklers--
June was hot--and dogs sprawled
in neighbors' yards, but my father took
the possibility of hammocks, the time of day
he settled into, or maybe it was night, the heavy
blanketing of stars. He shed
all gaudy particularities of adjectives,
the heft and shape of nouns, anything
funny he ever said, and the words
he yelled when he slammed the door
against--who?--he took that too.
The door bounced in the jamb three times.

Contents

 Wendy

 Mnookin