Angina
Remember father’s truck groaning
uphill that day the clutch failed and he
leaped out of the cab as his ten-wheeler
went barreling backwards into someone’s
two-car garage? He stood there sweating,
a survivor grinning.
I’m not smiling on this damn hill,
someone’s wheel rolling up my chest—
the neighborhood quiet,
not a stop sign in sight—
crows making a gargle sound
in the catalpa, eyeing the flattened
squirrel opposite Murphy’s
driveway—
in the middle of the road,
half-huffing, half-dreaming,
a roadway humming beneath my ribs,
I’m thinking of the first morning
his leg went numb, how he dragged
himself to the toilet—the 1960 pokerino
vase from his girlfriend in Atlantic City
knocked over.
I don’t know if I want to sit
on this rock with a nitro dissolving
under my tongue, my head expanding,
or get up and go dizzy to the next peak.