Parking With Boys
“Don’t park!” my mother’d call
as I headed out to climb in some boy’s
sputtering Ford Escort or mom’s minivan.
But where else could we go?
After driving the Downriver streets
all night, past the Village Green
apartments with their sad slabs of shrubbery
and drained swimming pool, past rows
of single-story ranches with factory dads
illuminated by the nightly news.
Down Eureka Road, its humming
signs for transmission repair,
walk-in tattoos, cash for gold
and paycheck loans. Past the Ponderosa
Steakhouse and Hungarian Kitchen
to the riverfront and back again.
Around the third loop of the mix tape
it would be time to pull into the dark
lot between the hardware store and Chi-Chis
restaurant. Excused from the world
for a single hour, the streetlights dimmed
to soft focus through the windows’ fog.
Decades on, I’ll make the odd drive back
pass the gutted shopping mall, picture
the ghost of its Montgomery Ward
in some parallel dimension hawking
flammable nightgowns and floral sofa sets,
where flocks of teens still converge
in the food court and grope in corridors.
And on certain nights, I’ll maybe park
alone on the overpass overlooking
the towers of what used to be
U.S. Steel and watch the long, bright
flame of its flare stack kiss the sky,
the only light here that never goes out.
Christina Kallery is the author of Adult Night At Skate World, in its 2nd edition from Dzanc Books. Her poetry has appeared in Rattle, ONE ART, Rust & Moth and other publications, and has been included in Best of the Web and Respect: The Poetry of Detroit Music. She currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.