by Craig Cowden
“Stop the car… We want dramatic change. We don't get to go to Disneyland until we figure this out.” — Senator John Curtis on Face the Nation, February 23, 2025
Climbing out our 60s wood-panel station wagon
somewhere in the wilderness of eastern Oregon,
we scurry behind Mom as Dad rages about
our whining, his money, the heat, the route.
Dad yanks the jack out of the back and liberates
the car of regulated seatbelts, warning lights,
“dem wasteful mandates,” while mumbling “CAFE”
to the catalytic converter — what is that anyway?
Out goes the spare tire unmaintained and flat.
Power steering? “When you’re a man, who needs that?”
Jettisoned is the rear facing seat where we escape,
a privilege we apparently no longer rate.
Tossed are my anime, smashed is brother’s tablet,
to the ditch goes sister’s faded rainbow jacket
followed soon by Mom’s remote workplace laptop
while the bumper with peace stickers lies on the blacktop.
Turning to his scions now in shock by the road,
he demands that we just stop, but we aren’t told
what to change in our dysfunctional family
or how to reboot the ruined car and make it to Disney.
Author’s note: On CBS’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan on February 23, 2025, Senator John Curtis, Republican of Utah, repeats the metaphor of “stopping the car” to confront the disruptive kids 11 times in response to multiple oversight questions in this 8 minute interview. This poem imagines what transitions might occur during this “stop the car moment.” Margaret Brennan fails to ask, and Senator Curtis doesn’t offer, how the car gets rebooted — maybe jumper cables, heart defibrillator, Ctrl+Alt+Del?
Craig Cowden is a retired director of program management from Oracle Corporation. With his engineering background, he thinks it quite logical that the same skills that architect efficient, elegant software can also inspire measured, meaningful verse. He relishes writing cynical poems from alternative perspectives covering current events and life in general. Craig's poems have appeared in Lighten Up Online, Birdy Magazine, and Lighthouse Writers Workshop Anthology Collections of Poetry and Short Fiction.