Listen to the engine when I downshift.
If the cops pull us over? Just say it’s urgent. I’m driving you to the hospital.
STANDARD SHIFT BY MARCIA L HURLOW 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 141 PREVIEW
Here’s when my urge to live another person’s life began, on the drive from after-school orchestra practice, my cello case flat on its back, lodged securely behind my seat. My friend’s bass viol wobbled in the station wagon’s cargo. Its scrolled head thumped against the tailgate window. An anxious first-year driver, I scanned the fields for a deer or hungry fox that strayed onto Green Farm Road. An angry Angus bull could rage through the fence and right into my dad’s black Pontiac. Mark said, “Pull over and let me drive. It’s late. My mom’s car has standard shift. I’ve practiced. I can drive this baby like shifting hand positions on my bass. If the cops pull us over? Just say it’s urgent. I’m driving you to the hospital. Say you broke some foot bone when you dropped your cello.” I watched the gold twilight over empty corn stalks, the scythe of new moon rising through skeletal fence row trees. “Listen to the engine when I downshift. In third now it’s a tuba. Now, fifty!” I fought the sudden inertia that threw me back in my seat. I wanted to push my hands ahead, clutch the padded dashboard. I wanted to match Mark’s head tilted above the steering wheel. He wasn’t going home. He squinted into another dark mile, its long silence.
MARCIA HURLOW
My husband, linguist and artist Greg Stump, and I sit together for two hours every weekday to “create”. I don’t always write poetry but I have the space in those hours, physically and mentally, to do it. I have published two collections of poetry, Dog Physics, and Practice Rapture. I am the co-editor-in-chief of Kansas City Review.