Subaru Baja

[reverie]

*First section still needs much work, second it much cleaner I think.*

 

 

 

Subaru Baja

 

I.

 

It was perhaps the ugliest car I had ever seen,

if you could call it car. Not many could.

 

The dealership practically paid my brother to take it off the lot,

and damned if he didn't make the best of that

bright yellow, four-wheeled abomination.

 

Where I saw an impractically short bed pretending to be backseat,

my brother saw only the potential of it—a vehicle in translation,

not exactly a car or truck, a hybrid just like us.

I just shook my head at the spectacle; well at least he’d never lose it

in a parking lot.

 

II.

 

Is it wrong to laugh at a murder trial?

To heave under your breath

struggling to contain the bubbles of irony

that apparently only you can perceive.

 

The lawyers kept asking the same question:

How would you describe the vehicle

you saw on the evening of February the 15th?

 

The brow of the witness would furrow while his eyes

went somewhere else, perhaps he would bite

into his lip a little, nodding as he rubbed his chin,

and after that measured pause he would reply

like the ones who had testified before him,

"I'd say it was bright yellow and somewhere

between half-a-car and half-truck."

 

I’d turn away from my family trying to remain contained.

It seemed everyone in the world had seen your truck that night.

Everyone, but the patrol-men fighting over whose jurisdiction

your broken body fell under.

Edited March 8, 2008 by reverie

[Wyvern]

Good poem, reverie. The personal feelings and history behind the piece are driven across well through the details and tone, which contain a great deal of suppressed anger and pain. I really like how you compare the patrol men of the last stanza to the others at the trial, and the irony of the ugly car standing out in the narrator's description at the trial was very well-incorporated as well. I also like some of the elements of the first segment, such as the reference to the car being "a hybrid just like us," though I guess I can see how you'd consider that part of the poem needing refinement... for starters, I'd probably drop "impractically" from the third stanza, though I generally have an aversion towards the use of adverbs in poetry.

 

Anyway, thanks for sharing this rev. :-) I think the title of the poem is perfect, by the way.