By: Dana Delibovi
We are lost in Beacon, New York,
thick with mosquitoes that we three kids
swat in the backseat
of Grandpa’s Impala,
climbing the Catskill roads,
windows open wide,
in a ‘62 metal-flake shell
speckled with bird poop,
all because we want to see
the old-time locomotives—
but this could be Jupiter or Ireland,
we’re so lost,
and getting scared those
pepper and egg sandwiches
Aunt Terri made won’t last forever,
until, like the steeple
of St. Roch’s church, a Texaco sign
emerges through the trees
and my cousin whips a peach pit
into the front seat and screams,
Grandpa ask for directions!
a plea met by a wave of the hand,
a big spit out the window, and
a laugh of power, as Grandpa
floors it past the Texaco,
pinning the three of us kids
against the seat, at the pleasure
of the patriarch.
Dana Delibovi is a poet, essayist, and translator. Her work has appeared in journals that include After the Art, Apple Valley Review, Bluestem, The Confluence, Forum, The Formalist, Linden Avenue, MidRivers Review, Riverside Quarterly, and Zingara Poetry Review. Her poetry traveled the St. Louis Metro as part of the National Poetry in Motion Series. Delibovi is consulting poetry editor for the e-zine, Witty Partition.