Within Earshot of 1991

The scene isn’t too hard for us to see: a short
white girl with bright orange curls, socket
wrench in hand, “Little Red Corvette,”
on cassette and blasting. Her car a metaphor
for a horse, a Mustang, that she’s maintained
for at least three years now. Brooke has too much
denim on and a light green jacket that
tells us it’s still autumn in Arkansas. The car
as street-ready as it will ever be, a steed
prepared for the kick from slow strut to gallop.
If we turn around, we can see her father emerge
by the driveway, making the walk from house
to shop, crossing the overgrown field
toward her as this image gives way to theater.
See him arrive and shout at the girl, his neck
seizing and straining out sounds that send Brooke
inside herself. We can’t quite make out his words
like a movie a mother watches with the door
closed, leaving only the schematics of its voices
for her sons to parse. Watch him finish and go
back home. Brooke remains. She sits inside the car
that she’s worked from junk into capable beast
and which she will see for the last time at 2 a.m.
some Friday soon, its brakes like a husband who
loses himself just at the moment he’s needed most.
We see her turn the music up a little. She looks out
the dirty windshield that’s just clear enough
to see a few birds flock to the shedding trees
that surround her family’s home.
She pulls her jacket close, the chill of night
beginning. And somewhere under the machine
everyone and their mother calls a horse, a leak.