Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, I COULD BE DRIVING, by APRIL OSSMANN


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

I COULD BE DRIVING, by                    
First Line: I guess my mistake was going to a salesman
Subject(s): Automobiles - Maintenance And Repair


I guess my mistake was going to a salesman
in the first place. Stupidly I thought that cliché there's
a problem with the car, tell the guy
who sold you it. Well, two years and
Lennie's long gone. Probably he's selling insurance
or washing cars or waiting tables, but he might as well
be dead here -- if he were,
here it would be no different. No, it's worse
than dead, he's been erased, no memory, no
mourning - just, nothing. Not a familiar
face in the place. So I'm telling Tony, I've got this
tear starting on my driver's seat back, and hey, the car's
still under warranty. Who's Lennie, your credit's good, I can

in a '94, he says, a two model up-grade from your car, air-
conditioning standard, a brand-new '94 for eight dollars less
per month than you're paying now, a lot more car --
what do you think? I'm thinking, why did Lennie leave,
it's just a little tear, maybe two inches long, the seam just beginning
to pull apart - it's not that bad. Then there's this
click in my head - yes, a new car.
I won't have to drive this nasty two-year-old
model around anymore, this two-year-old car with
its little imperfections: the missing hubcap where
I nicked a snowbank, the quarter-inch scratch
where a passenger kicked the dash, this living history
of my little disasters. I could be driving a spanking
new car & impress my friends, my ex-boyfriend's
long skis would have fit in this one, I guess I really do need
a bigger car. Well yes, he admits, it uses a little more gas, &
the insurance & registration are more, & yes,
there is a down payment. So I end up in auto-body where
I should have gone to begin with and they've ordered me
a new seat -- they don't even bother, he says -- they just
replace the whole thing. So I'm getting a whole new seat
and thinking how it's just a little two-inch tear, not even
a tear, but more of a pulling away.

Copyright © April Ossmann
http://www.unl.edu/schooner/psmain.htm
Prairie Schooner is a literary quarterly published since 1927 which
publishes original stories, poetry, essays, and reviews. Regularly cited in the
prize journals, the magazine is considered one of the most prestigious of the
campus-based literary journals.







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