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Gasoline
Amy Beveridge

It has the odor of stopped motion, relative
of grease and metal, yet delicious to inhale,
fumes shimmering through the head like heat,
like speed, or the lightness speed brings,
splashing emptiness under our childhood
sleeping bags spread along the station wagon’s hull,
the wood-paneled behemoth plowing through
the cold, clear starfield above, streaming
past ocotillo, saguaro, yucca on either side,
vibrating in the whoosh-wake of semis passing,
our mother trying to stay awake, alone, alone
in the front, two rows away from her girls
bundled like pupae and quietly watching
through the back window all that came before.

—
Amy Beveridge is a pediatric speech-language pathologist and graduate student in rhetoric and writing in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her work has been published in Heron Tree and bosque.

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