Enjambed 2010

Barbie Attacks Tokyo

by Lauren Davis

My father’s heart is a little red car

and when I lay my head on his chest

on nights I can’t sleep

I feel its engine thump-thumping beneath

his velvet skin.

Joshua has a red car

our father brought home for him one day

as a reward for doing well in school.

But he doesn’t play with it anymore,

he's moved on to other toys.

That car has a broken wheel anyway,

I crushed it with my foot

that Saturday Josh and I

played on mother’s kitchen floor:

Barbie attacks Tokyo.

Mother says father’s heart

is broken, has a crack.

I lay my head on his chest

feel it racing round, turning corners in his body,

u-turning on him.

Our neighbor’s car

is old and rusted and sits

on concrete blocks;

front yard weeds creeping through

cracks like pores in skin.

Neighbor kids play in it after school,

and on Saturdays I sometimes join in

beating the torn leather seats with our feet,

springs and wires bulging through dead skin

like bony vertebrae screaming.

We share the pedals with our tiny feet.

I can smell breakfast in their clothes, their hair.

I wonder if my father’s car will be up on blocks,

divided by some shining knife, clamped open to the air:

a monstrous abomination, turning on its maker.

I think of their father cooking them bacon and eggs.

I want to sock the oldest – hard! – in his stomach,

watch him double over, hiccupping for air.

I can feel my heart pounding.

Then I’m all wind through air,

and I rush across the ivy, the bougainvilleas

dividing our houses. Such wind barely carries

voices shouting after me.

I stream through the house, find the car with the broken wheel

and smash it against the wall.

copyright Lauren Davis 2010