Erin Poh (pohet@igc.org) is a totally unknown Bay Area poet and union representative who drives a lot. When you're driving along and see a bunch of pickets, think of her and honk.



AWAY

Maybe I hadn't had enough coffee.
Maybe I was suffering
the effects of overzealous dieting -
but whatever...
I only realized at the last that
I was turning left directly in front of
an enormous no left turn sign.

Just a bit of wrist,
a slow turn of the wheel and
I became a fugitive.
Actually, I only became a fugitive
after a timid (and extremely humble)
glance in the rearview told me
that the second car back waiting at the light
which was only now changing,
just waiting to come directly into my flow,
was a black and white.

I only needed to see the light bar
and my face flushed red
then yellow,
then I hit the gas.
Not too much, not enough to add insult to injury,
just enough to get me going down
to the corner where, legally,
I could turn and guilelessly evade that cop
who I hoped wouldn't even have noticed,
too interested in his mid-morning donut.

I hit the turn as quickly as I could in an Explorer
with a caffeinated cop on a sugar high behind,
then burned down the too long block up to Irving.
As I reached the corner, the cruiser was coming up behind
so, naturally, I went right.
Fast.
There was a meat truck parked on the
right and a young muscle was
unloading the shining carcasses, hollow and slick
and grossly white in the odd early September El Nino heat.

I saw my chance. I skidded around the
van, turned right at the corner (the truck
was hanging-ten into the intersection)
and pulled into a driveway.
All Stop.
Head down.

In the Sunset, on those rare occasions
when it's still and hot, the natives
can be observed to open garage doors
and bring out any chairs they have or
old velour couches -
discarded backseats of Econoline vans -
just to sit and enjoy the rare commodity,
read the Chron, blow on a cup of coffee.

It was into such a driveway that my car
invited itself.
Their look was unmistakable.
SOCCER MOM ON THE LAM?
Seconds later that cop fairly flew down Irving
gushing that airy sound the cruiser
made as it thought to catch me.

I took the back way home, fast and
breath by breath up by twin peaks
and hoped there wouldn't be a car waiting.
I'm still waiting for the call.
Jail services has a nice orange suit for me.
Just for me.

Thoughts like this (especially on a Friday)
have led to an inner discussion
of the relative merits of Catholic confession,
of the wheel of dharma,
and whether ketosis is
an acceptable defense strategy.









MANTRA
Sometimes I have days that are like driving along a straight highway, maybe a desert highway and I miss the off ramps but see them there: Chain link fences clutching their dirty white paper wrappers, their cellophane and their Marlboro boxes. The dirty trees, the oleander, smoke trees, iceplant, the tumbleweed and joshua tree.

Sometimes as I'm driving along I notice the median, and how poppies profuse amidst such neglect: the asbestos, particulates, lack of adoration or a gardeners' attention. The lupine that sticks its head up to see who's passing by. There are always ditches where we are bound to stop and do our business: piss, puke, dump garbage bags full of...What? I'm always horrified when I see those bags - plastic, of course - so the blood won't seep through. But I do notice the flowers. I like to follow the moon, too, as it rises over the mountains in front of me, or looks like it's below me in a valley, surrounded by airplanes in a holding pattern and looking like some phenom surrounded by her suitors.

Sometimes I'll have been totally aware, but not, so that I snap-to and realize I don't know where I'm going or where I've been, and certainly not where I am right then. My face in the mirror - Well, really just my eyes and a narrow slice of my nose and a bit of cheek - looks the same, but can I ever be sure? I mean, sometimes I get so fucking hypnotized by the most insignificant things: the telephone poles and the way the wire rises and dips, rises and dips so serenely, the sound of fenceposts as I pass, or the intricate patterns of a planted field. It's like reading tea in the desert. The remnants of truck tires are leaves in the empty bowl of open sky.

Sometimes these days of driving are hung with the thickest fog - just the hum of tires and the slap of the intermittent wipers to mark time - or the rain is pelting down. I'd like to stop and dance, but I've got places to go, people to see. I see people, but they're not human, they're drivers. If it's an old man, he's "Dad" or "Pops," an old woman is "Granny," a young one is invariably "Bitch" and young men are "idiots." I, personally, am extremely apologetic for any traffic wrongs I have or may commit. Don't shoot, I'll put my hair shirt on when I get home.

Sometimes I'm envious of people playing loud music, doing the head, neck and shoulder thing - singing along. Makes me think they don't have far to go. I hum as I notice the wool blanket under the overpass and the cans of Sterno, shopping carts and bungee cords. I stop at the larger mom & pops that only have a coupla items - always an over-ripe banana perfuming the air - pine floors long since stripped of any finish and worn to dipping low in the aisles. I've sat in gas stations wondering who sits in that chair, the rusty metal one with the holes in the seat, and breathes the fumes. Is it the guy who buys the spotted banana?

Sometimes I wonder if I'll end my days red-eyed and nodding in the unbearable heat of Needles, still, feeling cold, wishing I knew how to play checkers; that some driver would stop to play. No, maybe I'll be a palmist with a half burned-out neon sign on some highway out in North Dakota after living long enough to receive a massive revelation which utterly changes my life but which teaches me nothing about fortune.

Sometimes I feel like chanting the forbidden mantra, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet..."


Erin Tyson Poh


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