by Steve Hellyard Swartz
Cold rain on my windshield
Cold rain that hits the window and splats
That makes the sound:
I want to be snow
In the long line snaking out of the middle school parking lot
In the yellow buses with Garfields crucified on grilles
In the short boxy buses driven by suburban welfare queens who stare so mean
When you make fun of their Lacrosse Mom decals
The sound of radios can be heard through closed windows
The blab today is about the Primary
Who will it be? Obama or Hillary?
I am listening to the sound of rain trying to be something else
I am rolling down my window
And raising my face
To the part of heaven responsible for audio effects
I am getting wet
I am staring at the profile of America's Most Wanted
Which creep by me
Inch by inch
I can almost reach out and touch the dinosaur's toe nail that filled the tank of the Expedition that the pony tail'ed blonde is driving
What difference does it make who wins?
The bus driver had said to the Mom at the stop this morning
Will you still vote? She wants to know
Cuz if it's raining like this, I don't think I'm gonna go
I look across the street
Out onto 155
Where the traffic is a mirror image of the access road
I stick my head out the window and
A woman in a monster Toyota looks at me and makes a face
As if I'd just bequeathed her right to destroy the earth anyway she pleases
To someone who got to America a week after her grandmother arrived on the boat
I do something funny with my nose
A bus driver looks at me as if I was the guy who invented the fart
I am getting wet
My car's engine is dead
As my mother used to say:
Are you all right in your head?
My car answers for me
My little car with its capacity for spin
Radio off
Rain on the roof
My car tells the turned heads of the guilty
Look somewhere else
He's not in
Steve Hellyard Swartz's poetry has appeared in New Verse News, Best Poem, The Kennesaw Review, and switched-on gutenberg. He has won Honorable Mentions in the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Poetry Competition and the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards. In 2008, his poetry will appear in The Paterson Review and The Southern Indiana Review. His film, Never Leave Nevada, opened in Dramatic Competition at the 1990 U.S. Sundance Film Festival.