Charlotte San Juan: Three Poems

What Drives You Home At 2am

You admit that it is the way

An oncoming train becomes a slow moving

Upside down glowing socket.

A snake whose loud mouth is open wide

And full of light

You admit that it is every stray cat

Huddled beneath parked cars

Hugged together, a tight ball of yarn

Eyes caught by your headlights,

Two illuminated silver coins

Marking the way back home.

California Trash

At times my eyes are

Shooting blanks into the horizon,

Trying to puncture the clouds.

Trying to escape the smog and nicotine,

And the yellow sheets of paper that burgers are wrapped in

That float around in the gutter,

In parking lots and

Sway across the beach sand.

Blackout

You never liked night driving.

And now, on the road

You find yourself a strange,

Lonely vehicle that careens

Up an empty street

Drenched in the pitch black nightgown

Of the devil herself.

It makes you remember the folksy darkness

Of Massachusetts,

How a single pair of headlights

Isolate every passing tree

Like tall nude broads

Exposed and awkwardly branching,

Momentarily bathed in silk light.

And then shrouded safe by

An ink curtain draping over them

As you, with feigned indifference

Leave them untouched, distant figures

To be groped by other lights.