Ballard Street Poetry Journal

Mom would turn our 49 Chevy into traffic,
synchronizing clutch and the big lever
on the column, whine first till Sigman's
make second at Woolworth's, third near Rexall Drug.

I would stand behind her on the hump
where the vast front seat-back splits.
I can still sense her turquoise shoulder,
her dark-brown hair tangled by the wind,

vaguely to the left of a foreshortened Main Street,
vivid and lively, cropped by the binocular
of a sloped, divided windshield
and floating on the long white hood

whose chromed missile parted the heat
of the glass-sheeted macadam,
slant-lined for the tidy sorting
of sturdy DeSotos and bat-winged Cadillacs.

Mark Rhoads started writing poetry at age 50. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota where he teaches in the music department of Bethel University. His poems have appeared in Snakeskin, The Deronda Review (formerly The Neovictorian/Cochlea), and Contemporary Rhyme.

Errata: In the print version of this issue Mr. Rhoads poem contains two errors: His last name is Rhoads not Rhoades. Also, the last stanza included in his poem should not have appeared with his work. The poem appears correctly here, on this page.