The BlueIris Semi-Nightly Poetry Break, 10/21/08

"Necking"

I remember the Arabic numerals on the dashboards,
aquarium green, like the paintbrush tips
the watch-girls licked, licking the radium—
we were there above the Cyclotron,
in the hills, the Rad Lab under us
enclosed in its cyclone fence. The interiors
of the cars were shaped like soft flanks,
the cloth front seats shaped as some mothers'
laps. I remember the beauty of the night,
the crisp weightless blackness, the air
that rose up the slope straight from the sea,
from Seal Rock—we slid slowly
along each other. Berkeley, below,
without my glasses, was like a bottom
drawer of smeared light. The rape
and murder of our classmate had happened in these hills,
so the fragrance of the dirt, porous and mineral,
—eucalyptus and redwood humus—
that had buried her body, was there with sex,
and one gleam down there was the doughnut shop
where he had picked her up—as if the intimate
pleasure of eating doughnuts, now,
for all of us, were to bear his mark.
And the easy touch of the four thousand volts,
that was in the car with us
with everything else—the rivets in the boys' jeans,
their soldered clothes, the way they carried
the longing of the species, you could not help but pity them
as they set you on stunned fire. I would almost
pass out, my body made of some other
substance, my eyes open in the green darkness
of some other planet. And in some other
car, on some other skirt of the mountain,
a boy I secretly adored. I remember
how it felt, eyes closed, kissing,
streaming through the night, sealed in a capsule
with the wrong person. But the place was right,
mountains on my left hand,
sea on my right, I felt someday I might find him,
proton electron we would hit and stick and
meanwhile there were the stars, and the careful not
looking at or touching the boy's pants,
and my glasses, wings folded, stuck
in a pocket. I can hear the loud snap
when we leaned on them and they broke, we drove down the
hill, the porch-lamp blazed, I would enter
below its blurred gem, it seemed
endless then, the apprenticeship to the mortal.

—Sharon Olds

Wow, this is so damn beautiful, and atmospheric...

I know Berkeley, and this is spot on...

And I remember being young, and making out in the car, too...

Thank you!

:hug:

Don't know why that is. My exes weren't really "car people," I guess.