I Think She Was the Kind of Girl

who hadn't worn much underwear since she left for college
I could just imagine

I sometimes wear my helmet and sometimes don't
I can't decide if my brain is something I want to protect

When she got on back
I could just imagine what vinyl felt like
how she might stick to it (or it to her)
and the way it would sound if she ever got off
and the ways her thighs would rash and redden

"Oops," I said when the motorcycle went down in gravel
and I guessed I should not have been showing off so much.


(Originally published in Huevos, 1987)

Hot Wheels Run Through My Brain on those Orange Tracks

I remember Deora, lime-green bubble-topped fantasy hot-rod, and, when I clamped my daredevil loop to the top bunk of my only child bunkbed, how it would throw itself off the track in g-force induced delusion and tumble free until smacking itself against my closet door. I loved that little car.

I let twin red Camaros free on my nubbly chenille bedspread to act out the chase scene from Bullit on the San Francisco hills of my knees. I always wanted to be in Steve McQueen's car but never that other, bald-headed guy with the shotgun's car.

My little cop-car with the plastic blue flasher welded to the roof was almost always the bad guy and got confused on those dusty corners when the Mustang with the really steerable wheels did donuts by my desk. The odor of Crayolas shavings from the 64 box with built-in sharpener filled my head like gasoline fumes as I laughed and laughed along with another clean get-away, another harmless romp through the backwoods of my bedroom as the tiny little cool guy kissed the tiny little cool girl wearing tiny little cut-off Levi's and a tube top inside that tiny little Mustang.

I still have a drawing that I encased in wax paper with a hot iron under adult supervision of me, almost life-sized, sitting at the wheel of a gold custom El Camino with two surfboards in the back having a drag-race with a purple Baja Bug and I'm winning, I'm pulling ahead, but just barely.