Cemetery Cars
At night, some skell was punching in the windows of the cars parked along the gates of the cemetery and I could hear it from my apartment, more wary of the silence afterwards. I don’t know what he was looking for or what he thought he’d find. But he protected his hand with old beach towels and left them behind, bristling with glass. The kind of cars left there were rusted vaults already. Spraypainted Econolines, an old Fleetwood that was once green, the black fabric of its roof chewed away, a gray Honda with flat tires and rimless wheels with lozenge eyes. Once, on a drunken night I gave up trying to find responsible parking and left my Maxima there. I woke up hours later, troubled by something and heard the thump and shatter of a windshield. Running outside in unlaced sneakers, I saw the open trunk. A hundred yards away a large man with short black hair was slowly riding my daughter’s purple bicycle, his knees splayed outwards, his thick right hand dripping a line of bright blood that didn’t seem to bother him at all. I stood on a square of sidewalk and he circled me once. I know he circled me because I saw the oblong pattern of his blood later, still sticky, the drops growing sparse as he sped off, the training wheels rattled by every concrete crack. I cursed my own cowardice for hours afterwards and drove the car till dawn looking for him. The passenger seat was lined with baby blue beads of broken glass, my face was going numb from the cold air sweeping in at every green light. My nose was running like I had a cold and it was the beginning of summer. Later, when I calmed down, I imagined he brought the bicycle home to his daughter or son, and that something in him snapped into the right place, but a few days afterwards, he was at it again, breaking car windows again. Windows of cars he’d already broken. He didn’t touch the nicer cars on the other side of the street. So, I don’t know. Maybe he was crazy. Maybe he was just specific. By the end of August, the Fleetwood didn’t even have a side pane left. In the back seat, rain fell on a heap of old newspapers that some driver had once collected. When I leaned my head in the open window, careful to avoid scraping my neck skin against the one remaining shard of glass, it smelled like a dirty birdcage.
| Matt Marinovich |
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levelheaded: Cemetery Cars
The boundary between prose-poetry and flash-fiction is blurry at best; it’s just so hard to tell the difference. Even when considering prose-poetry by itself, it’s hard to say whether it is better classified as prose for its narrative style, or rather belongs to the genre of poetry for its attention to language and use of metaphor.
And then of course the other question is, prose-poetry, poetic prose, flash-fiction—as long as it’s good, why bother with labels? In other words, who cares? But the truth is, we kind of care, we do. And by we we mean many of us readers, editors, cyclists, skells, and many a great debater. What we’re really asking is: what is a poem? The need for distinction comes from the realization that if there isn’t one, then anything can be called a poem, hence the word (world!) would be meaningless. Might as well call poems objects and our magazine “LEVELER Objectivism.” But we refuse; even knowing there will never be a clear answer, we’ll continue being suspicious of all our beloved poetic identifiers: line breaks (is their usage sufficient for a written piece to be called a poem?), metaphor (doesn’t it exist in any kind of literature?), attention to language (any great writer who doesn’t have that?), economy/using few words to say plenty (but then how about “Don Juan”? “The Prelude”? “The Wasteland”?). The answer to each of those questions could be any of the following: definitely yes, obviously no, sometimes, oftentimes, not in a million years.
Having cleared that up, we can now talk about the poem.
What’s most intriguing about Matt Marinovich’s poem is the speaker/skell connection. First, it is night (dark then), yet the speaker can tell the skell’s hand is “protected by old beach towels.” Quite a particular image for a detail that had to be noticed in a short moment. Second, he seems to have spent quite some time with the same cars the skell did. He knows of the torn “black fabric of [the Fleetwood’s] roof” and knows it was once green. He sees particular shapes, “lozenge eyes” of the Honda and “oblong pattern” of the skell’s blood. His shattered window comes to life in shape and color as “baby blue beads of broken glass.” He is almost too close to the scene, and nearly intertwined with his skell. It’s too inviting for us not to say about the speaker what he says about the skell: “[m]aybe he was crazy. Maybe he was just specific.”
If, however, we keep them separate and rely on the speaker’s story as is, it is ironically easy to feel affection for the skell. First, because he is dubbed “some skell.” Second, because like the speaker we can imagine him bringing the bike back to his children and understand why he is given to crime. Third, because we know it is rarely possible for something to just “[snap] into the right place” so that a person who fell to thievery would be enlightened in a quick moment and change forever.
At the same time, it is also easy to feel for the speaker. A large man riding your daughter’s purple bicycle—hey, that’s just wrong! Yet a large man on a tiny bicycle with “his knees splayed outwards” is also hilarious.
Looking into the Fleetwood again, the speaker says, “In the back seat, rain fell on a heap of old newspapers that some driver had once collected.” This could be a poem by itself, à la WCW (the poet, not the wrestling team). Especially since the main story is already over, the ending serves as a poetic afterthought. We’re given one final peculiar look into the broken car. Peeping in, the speaker sums up the poem, concludes his narration, and describes his underlying state of mind with a single image: “it smelled like a dirty birdcage.”
– The Editors
P.S. Speaking of WCW, hasn’t the anti-LeBron James mayhem gone too far?
