Panic on the 10, Near 7th Street
That desert champagne Acura was not just a stick shift but a steal, aside from the hood’s broken latch, which I’d tie shut with multiple ropes in a mix of macramé & sailors’ knots. Each rope eventually failed loose into shred, & never more catastrophically than this blue-skied Thursday: the hood bobs at 65 mph & then smacks open into my windshield, spiderwebbing, the road invisible through rattling metal. To my right, a 16-wheeler; to my left, swarming motorbikes. As if we are waltzers, the 16-wheeler slows & honks to shepherd me safe to shoulder, & I take each lane without breathing, blindfolded & tender, my wave to him that of a dandelion to sun. I hunch then in the best thing I own, awaiting my dad & Triple-A, squeezing my second-hand blue Nokia phone, wheezing like a dying engine, my knees bouncing bruises against steering column, sputtering I I I I I I over & over, no clue how to verb the sentence
In our dream band, on baroque cello:
Darla Himeles (they/she) is a Philadelphia-based poet. They are the author of the chapbook Flesh Enough and the full-length poetry collection Cleave, both published by Get Fresh Books. Her poems and essays have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net and can be read in recent and forthcoming issues of Lesbians are Miracles, The Gay & Lesbian Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Night Heron Barks, Honey Literary, and American Poetry Review. They hold an AB in English from Bryn Mawr College, an MFA in poetry and poetry in translation from Drew University, and a PhD in American literature from Temple University, where they work as the assistant director of the Writing Center and teach writing workshops. Find Darla on Instagram @darlahimelespoetry, and read more at darlahimelespoetry.com.
Ran Off With the Star Bassoon 