Jared Carter
Custom Van
Longtime Near-Eastside Resident Dies
Byron Strode, last seen being carried
forcibly from the porch of his double
two blocks north of Woodruff Place
by medics from Community Hospital
not because the rent was six months due
or because he was up to his old tricks
and had been partying for a solid week
but because he had already fallen down
two flights of stairs
waking up neighbors
who called 9-1-1 and reported him
lying there in the snow turning blue,
blubbering so much they couldn’t hear
their TVs – on a night IU was playing –
Byron, who called out from the stretcher
when they were strapping him down
to get him loaded into the white truck –
“Hey, they’ll rip off my van, hey man,
don’t let them steal my fucking van!”
But nobody would have had the nerve.
For two years after he died the van stood
untouched in the Kroger parking lot
north of Woodruff, in all weathers,
even snowplows carving paths around it –
a Caribou 620 camper mounted on the frame
of a Cadillac Eldorado cut off just back
of the front-door column.
“When I drive
along East Tenth Street,” he used to say,
“and they look up and see me coming
in that custom van from hell, the crack-heads
take off one way and the meth-freaks go
the other, and by god there’s plenty of room
for an honest juicer to squeeze through!”
_________________________
Nobody Noticed Exactly
Nobody noticed exactly
what happened that night
when the fundamentalist preacher
just out of college and just married
to his high-school sweetheart
and just finished driving 500 miles
on their way to Niagara Falls
but too tired to go any farther
finally pulled off at the Erie exit
where he could at least begin
to unwrap and inspect what
she had been saving for him
all those years –
least of all did she,
Cindylou Bonebreaker, one year
out of secretarial school and working
as a cashier at the bank back home
ever begin to understand what hit her
when she came out of the motel bathroom
wearing that black-lace bikini set
and peek-a-boo negligee she had ordered
direct from Frederick’s of Hollywood
to surprise him with totally –
since
she had been fooling with the garter tabs
and trying to get her seams straight
and had not noticed her new husband
down on his knees in his pajamas praying
that he be found worthy of this moment
and safe from all lascivious thoughts –
when a voice seeming to come from nowhere
and everywhere but actually belonging
to a Red Ball trucker on Dexedrine
operating his CB at twice normal power
and rapping to some dude twenty miles back
in a crossfire fuel-injection Trans-Am
came in on the clock radio by the bed –
“Tomcat, this is your almighty ever-loving
Big Daddy here, do you read me, good buddy?
The coast is absolutely clear all the way
to Big-B Buffalo and you got the green light
to jump on that little mama of yours and go!”
First published in The Alternative Magazine
Copyright © 1983 by Jared Carter
_________________________
‘70 Nova
for Linda B. who sold it to me
It was, curiously, the last Detroit classic
unless you count the ‘73, but that was when
they started putting all sorts of gadgets
on the engine to stop air pollution. The ‘70
was still your basic six with four on the floor.
I never took care of mine. Like Vietnam,
there was no telling when it would end,
and until it did, no point in worrying. Tony,
a rock musician, came over sometimes
and tuned it up, if I bought the beer. He’d take
things off he didn’t like – a hose here, a wire
there – and break twigs from a lilac bush
to plug the holes. It ran until I traded it
for a case of Stroh’s. Shine, perishing republic!
Longtime Near-Eastside Resident Dies
Byron Strode, last seen being carried
forcibly from the porch of his double
two blocks north of Woodruff Place
by medics from Community Hospital
not because the rent was six months due
or because he was up to his old tricks
and had been partying for a solid week
but because he had already fallen down
two flights of stairs
waking up neighbors
who called 9-1-1 and reported him
lying there in the snow turning blue,
blubbering so much they couldn’t hear
their TVs – on a night IU was playing –
Byron, who called out from the stretcher
when they were strapping him down
to get him loaded into the white truck –
“Hey, they’ll rip off my van, hey man,
don’t let them steal my fucking van!”
But nobody would have had the nerve.
For two years after he died the van stood
untouched in the Kroger parking lot
north of Woodruff, in all weathers,
even snowplows carving paths around it –
a Caribou 620 camper mounted on the frame
of a Cadillac Eldorado cut off just back
of the front-door column.
“When I drive
along East Tenth Street,” he used to say,
“and they look up and see me coming
in that custom van from hell, the crack-heads
take off one way and the meth-freaks go
the other, and by god there’s plenty of room
for an honest juicer to squeeze through!”
_________________________
Nobody Noticed Exactly
Nobody noticed exactly
what happened that night
when the fundamentalist preacher
just out of college and just married
to his high-school sweetheart
and just finished driving 500 miles
on their way to Niagara Falls
but too tired to go any farther
finally pulled off at the Erie exit
where he could at least begin
to unwrap and inspect what
she had been saving for him
all those years –
least of all did she,
Cindylou Bonebreaker, one year
out of secretarial school and working
as a cashier at the bank back home
ever begin to understand what hit her
when she came out of the motel bathroom
wearing that black-lace bikini set
and peek-a-boo negligee she had ordered
direct from Frederick’s of Hollywood
to surprise him with totally –
since
she had been fooling with the garter tabs
and trying to get her seams straight
and had not noticed her new husband
down on his knees in his pajamas praying
that he be found worthy of this moment
and safe from all lascivious thoughts –
when a voice seeming to come from nowhere
and everywhere but actually belonging
to a Red Ball trucker on Dexedrine
operating his CB at twice normal power
and rapping to some dude twenty miles back
in a crossfire fuel-injection Trans-Am
came in on the clock radio by the bed –
“Tomcat, this is your almighty ever-loving
Big Daddy here, do you read me, good buddy?
The coast is absolutely clear all the way
to Big-B Buffalo and you got the green light
to jump on that little mama of yours and go!”
First published in The Alternative Magazine
Copyright © 1983 by Jared Carter
_________________________
‘70 Nova
for Linda B. who sold it to me
It was, curiously, the last Detroit classic
unless you count the ‘73, but that was when
they started putting all sorts of gadgets
on the engine to stop air pollution. The ‘70
was still your basic six with four on the floor.
I never took care of mine. Like Vietnam,
there was no telling when it would end,
and until it did, no point in worrying. Tony,
a rock musician, came over sometimes
and tuned it up, if I bought the beer. He’d take
things off he didn’t like – a hose here, a wire
there – and break twigs from a lilac bush
to plug the holes. It ran until I traded it
for a case of Stroh’s. Shine, perishing republic!
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Jared Carter appears in the Fall-Winter & Spring-Summer
issues of Writers Write On.
issues of Writers Write On.
Jared Carter's new book, Cross this Bridge at a Walk, is
now available from Wind Publications in Kentucky.
Its sixteen narrative poems recount incidents in America’s
history from the Revolution to the present, with cameo
appearances by Mother Ann Lee, Emily Dickinson, Scott
Joplin, and Bix Beiderbecke.
To read sample poems from the book, go to “Coxey’s
Army,” “Spirea,” or “Jesus Walking on the Water.”
now available from Wind Publications in Kentucky.
Its sixteen narrative poems recount incidents in America’s
history from the Revolution to the present, with cameo
appearances by Mother Ann Lee, Emily Dickinson, Scott
Joplin, and Bix Beiderbecke.
To read sample poems from the book, go to “Coxey’s
Army,” “Spirea,” or “Jesus Walking on the Water.”
See Jared Carter's Website aat
http://www.jaredcarter.com
http://www.jaredcarter.com