The Scare Car

By Mary Moore

 

Dream stole the car from

the baby-come-home photo—

 

Mom getting out, turned slightly

showing the good gams—

 

Mom, the Bombshell,

Dad would say—and me

 

bundled in her

arms and pink flannel.

 

The car is black like the crow

of scare, like the coal

 

Grandpa brought me

to show what bad earned.

 

 

Over and over, Dream stages me

in my red-brown striped

 

little-girl T—I’m four or five—

toeing the curb near the black

 

car. It rolls forward,

driverless,

 

and catches fire—No Body or God

or Mom torched it—

 

the flames leap and writhe,

tongues and knives

 

dividing into more,

as in the holy-card

 

purgatory Dad gave me:

the Virgin Mary

 

wears a red-brown cloak,

color of old wounds,

 

of penitence,

and perches above the sinners,

 

their arms and hands

flesh-flames, waving.

 

 

The dream seers say I am everyone

in the dream—me, Mom,

 

the scare car, and the damned

hands reaching up in flames.

 

And every time,

the Mom who is me

 

pushes me down curb

toward the car-fire hell

 

and I fall—some nights, I wake

face up, floored.

 

 

As fire is to ire and burn

to urn, I can’t rhyme

 

you out of me, Dream.

I’m fallen; Mom’s felon

 

or vice versa. And who’s

wounder, who’s wound?

 

 

The wonder is I’m not

char, cinder, ghost-writer,

 

ghost-writher,

barely holding form,

 

a murmuration,

barely woman.

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