BMR | Poetry | Road Test, Defiance, Ohio by Thom Ward

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More BMR Authors' Books:

Making Scenes
by Adrienne Eisen

Small Boat with Oars of Different Size
by Thom Ward

Viking Brides
by Richard Cumyn

Interesting Monsters
by Aldo Alvarez

The Gauguin Answer Sheet
by Dennis Finnell

Rosicrucian in the Basement
by Robert Sward

Bloodroot
by Aaron Roy Even

The Blue Moon Review

Road Test, Defiance, Ohio
by Thom Ward

Even the rear view mirror is nervous, she thinks, and the tires will leap from the curb when the boy grips the wheel, pulls out. Quarter-to-three with all its clouds. So much to process in a matter of seconds, like the time walking through the park she overheard a man say to his peers, Yep, that tree may be distinctive, but it’s so scrawny it couldn’t even handle a lynching. Turn right by the oak, she tells the boy. How many of these assessments had she presided over. Isn’t happiness the really bad stuff that might have happened, but didn’t. Stop here and begin your K-turn, she says, though all she can think about is how in October the maples will pucker up again, how objects in the mirror are more dangerous than they appear. Turn left, turn right. Sitting in the Plymouth years ago, the cold, dark garage, her brother trying to locate the keyhole and her mother suddenly blurting out, I bet you could find it if it had hair around it. Sharp work with that K-turn, she says, You know what’s next. There’s a name each gust of wind is known by before it yanks a first leaf from a branch. Only the roots know this name, she was sure of that, watching him hit the blinker, check his blind spot, methodically negotiate the crucial parallel park. You’re doing fine, she says, remembering the time her father kicked his briefcase down the stairs while her mother kept on drying the dishes, looking out the window at the ironwood. Turn right, turn left. Each grain of sand in the hourglass must be terrified of heights, she thinks. What’s the chance a few of them might fall so far they’ll reverberate like the click of her mother’s heels on the kitchen floor. Pull over by the chesnut, she tells him, this boy with his scrawny whiskers and zits. That was much better than before, that was good.



Thom Ward's third poetry collection, Various Orbits, was published this summer by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Ward is Editor and Development Director for BOA Editions, Ltd., and teaches creative writing workshops in elementary and secondary schools in Rochester, New York. He is a New York State Circuit Writer.

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