C.R.’s Goddesses Tune Up a 1984 Volkswagen Rabbit
Elizabeth Vignali
What species of goddess greens this gas station?
They spread their wrenches on a plastic tarp by the car.
They promised to care for this one.
Patti Smith wipes the dipstick against her tongue,
lifts a wrench from the plastic tarp by the car,
her heritage of opalescence anchored by the set of her chin.
Patti wipes the dipstick against her tongue.
Erica Jong runs her hands over the tires—
her heritage of opalescence anchored by the set of her chin, her lifted brow—
asks Billie Holiday to hand her the pocket gauge.
Erica runs her hands over the tires,
listens to the rubberlipped hiss telling her how hard to blow.
Billie fills her pockets with starbursts and cigarettes.
They’ve abandoned hundreds of cars between them,
left behind the rubber-lipped hiss of hardblown engines and suicide husks,
Patti’s petalpink purse of broken windshields and Rimbaud’s glass beads.
They’ve been abandoned by hundreds between them.
A couple pulls into the gas station. They, too, have been running.
The girl petals her pink fingers against the glass windshield,
her mouth of a silent film actress, his eyes of the wildwood south.
The couple pulls out of the gas station. They two have been running.
Billie sips her bright-finned sloe gin,
her mouth of a silent film actress, her eyes of the wildwood south.
She grips her parking lot bouquet. She flicks her heretic ash.
She sips her bright-finned gin slow.
Erica rethreads the valve cap, Patti screws on the gasket,
Billie grips her bouquet, flicks her heretic ash.
The radical tenderness of their fingertips.
Erica rethreads the valve cap. Patti screws on the gasket,
dawn’s resinous light cupped in the shadows of her collarbone,
in the radical tenderness of her fingertips.
They wipe wrinkles from the map and roll the windows down gently.
They catch dawn’s resinous light in their paper cups,
the species of goddess that greens this gas station.
They wipe wrinkles from the map, they roll the windows down gently.
They promised to care for this one.
Elizabeth Vignali is an optician and writer in the Pacific Northwest, where she coproduces the Bellingham Kitchen Sessions reading series. She is the author of Object Permanence and coauthor of Your Body A Bullet, forthcoming from Unsolicited Press. Her poems have appeared in Willow Springs, Cincinnati Review, Mid-American Review, Tinderbox, The Literary Review, and others.