me and my best friend k.t. hurtled down
chug holed roads in her green Gran Torino,
racing almost as fast as our doped up hearts
our hysterical laughter counter-pointed by the crash
of glass on rural mailboxes, my aim truer
after killing a bottle of Night Train Express
guzzled over ice in a Sonic cup
we wanted our lives
to go fast but every Sunday morning
strung-out and sore-jawed, we confessed
that all the crank in the world could
not give us the escape velocity we needed
while making plans to try again
on Thursday, just the same.

Jeanetta Mish is a poet, writer, editor, and literary scholar. Her first book, Tongue Tied Woman, won the Edda Poetry Chapbook Competition for Women in 2002. Her second poetry collection, Work Is Love Made Visible, won the 2010 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry, among other prizes. Mish is also the editor of Mongrel Empire Press, and is on the faculty of the Red Earth Creative Writing MFA program at Oklahoma City University.

Originally published in This Land, Vol. 3, Issue 19. Oct. 1, 2012.