james dean crash site
Let’s say the girl-boy
you love, drove into a ditch
with his eyes wide shut
and limbs twisted past
the steering wheel
without telling you
the password to your
shared Chase account.
Now you’re spending hours
on the phone with Laura,
customer service rep of the month
since 1994, trying to explain that he’s no longer with us,
et cetera. She offers
a classic sigh and follows
memorably with corporate
language, security
questions you can’t answer.
I can speak without words
if I squeeze hard enough.
Open-mouthed laundry baskets
taunt all humans
living inside a safe
and I never wanted to feel
things in any important way
beyond bowling nights
with slinging beers and hot wings.
Let’s say you figure it out;
his savings account screams
intentional decay in the same
vein as me. No words,
squeezed dry.
Life becomes deadly
once the mouse gets dumb
again. Chasing rewards
like a coked-up stockbroker,
spreading out extra skin
to get yourself through
the bad parts,
never finding that ditch
despite watching the car
get towed away. Maybe
you were never supposed
to know anything. Just
a revenge meal for the lonesome
ninth-grade English teacher
you met at a pub that burned
down days ago. Or maybe
you were supposed to remember
how to tie your shoes
through hazy eyes and debt-collection
calls, on hold with three
separate persons, with no
separate lives.
You’re probably supposed to be
in that car right now.
Bursting out of the sunroof
with solid intent, box-dye
updo coming undone
in San Diego winds, but
instead you cry at Caddyshack
eating unbuttered popcorn,
so maybe the high life
is just for reincarnation
and that rush you get
when the only thing
left to do is fucking
yourself rough and angry
without picturing his last
or first words. I never see
it through, always
half-dedicated, fully delusional,
awoken transformed
into a horrible vermin
with no way
to be lucid,
driving into some pole
because a ditch seems too final,
too obvious, too ironic.
You check yourself into
a motel at the border.
You’re reminded
of prom night beyond spiked
punch, nervous fingers pressed
inside your mouth, behind
your teeth, taking up
space you didn’t realize
you had left to give. Smiling is out
this year, you decided.
Makes us too pretty,
too compelling and inviting.
You’ve always begged
to be boring beside
a virginal bride, consuming
her vow for yourself.
But I’m behind the wheel
writing down the title
of some book some podcast
mentioned, and the road turns clear
once I stop thinking
about the exposed bone
in my mouth and that song
we both hate
is stuck in my head
but I miss the ditch
and miles later
make a left at
the James Dean
crash site memorial. Dull way
to die. I would never.
Just between us,
being ugly comes with a gas station price.
I hike up stained sweatpants at pump five
to get asked about a boyfriend.
I’m damselled, gas squirting
aimlessly from the nozzle.
We’re all hauling worry across the road
until thumbprints feel like desire
or comedown backseat Uber rides
boasting beating-heart music.
You have to buy tickets to the fountain
of youth but I spent my last twenty
at the street corner. Trucks drive by
and honk. I honk back,
knee-scraped blue jeans hinting
at young love on the sidewalk.
My overused sticky-dripping hoodie
gets washed on working nights
when bruises fade
into itching I can’t reach with chat rooms.
I just breathe out a sigh of lasting damage
when I find another faceless man
over sixty. Desperate enough to mouth
hello handsome to slutty guys
at the Shell downtown.
*
Elliot Engelsbel (he/they) is a poet from The Netherlands currently studying English and Psychology at Montclair State University. He lives in Bloomfield, NJ and has works published in the Normal Review.
New Critique 