Corona Civica

Tyler Kellogg

My Honda felt good in red, like those DANGER! signs skirting

the Oconee nuclear plant & I loved it, but never bothered

to learn anything about its fuselage, or oil, or oil’s life expectancy,

or that one day its tires would grow old & bald like you & me.

I knew about the dent in the hood, how, when rain came, wrens

would gather to bathe their chicks in its rusting pool, but I couldn’t

tell you how many horses powered the combusting planes beneath.

I used to cut class with my Honda & Jacob & a few other boys

who pretended to be disgusted by any machine that wasn’t stick

& drove them to Paw’s Diner on the side of highway 123,

where we all ordered plates of peach pie because that’s what rough

& tumble southern boys ate in movies & afterwards, I parked

on top of the garage reserved for ticket holding football fans

& thought about anything other than algebra, anything other

than the insurance I knew my father soon couldn’t afford.