Battle Tank Truck (Christopher Miles)

“Battle Tank Truck”

Like a battle tank the truck he sat in,
pocked with rust around the wheel wells,
propped by a lift kit and oversize springs;
from whose cab heavy metal poured,
driving away beetle-eaten maple leaves,
tinted windows on federal buildings,
hammers without handles, cats. The first
time I saw him, parked on the shoulder,
the last thing he touched was a crowbar;
pincered it like a pencil, scored his name
into tar. The last thing: a pint-sized bottle
of poison; its odor not like smoke or fog
closing in from the edge of a distance,
but a high-pitched ringing, a quick tap
on glass, the crystal ping of gravel
on his quarter panel when he drove off.

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  —Christopher Miles