Fender Bender, North Market St.

Our bumpers kissed—perhaps "made-out" is more in line

of what they did—and not the tender kind,

with lips, but teeth on teeth, and loud enough

to bring the cops. You came out screaming, gruff

and red and huffing, but all that I could think

about was Brave New World (which I fell asleep

reading last night) and the hypnopaedic verse

of “everyone belongs to everybody else,”

and how if that were true than I had hit

my own car, cause what is yours is mine, but it

was not the time for musing jokes. And besides,

if that were actually the case then I

would have to own your rage-distorted face,

the spittle spraying from your mouth, the race

of fresh profanity you birth as if

to populate a dying planet. And if,

in fact, we shared it all, then logically

these words are yours, the overhanging tree

that watches as the cops pull up is ours,

and maybe we are even Someone Else’s,

a thought so strange it must somehow be true

or absolutely crazy,
like tonight, you,

and thoughts on God and Huxley as we share

our license information and insurance cards.

L.R. Harvey Poetry