No one really knows how an engine works, but we suffer faith
and let them tinker
Best of all is to stroll casually by and catch them working late in winter;
blush at heaven’s gate in a damp dark street
A diorama, a Christmas card, the nativity starry on the bare belly of a Beetle.
Don’t kid yourself I am looking in there for father figures
when there are far more useful things at hand:
Better loves to be lifted and held, put together after being taken apart
This sort of motor must be made of more love and more —
why else would they work for free? They work for me and I am undeserving
I offer up biscuits on a Friday, my jeans for oil, keep a jar of solvent
under the sink by the greasy rags. There is a masculinity of mind that maroons me
in the kitchen like this (and I’m forgetting for now the masculinity of money)
but every one needs some thing. They take it when I’m not watching
and give it the works. Better not ask how long, or how much and certainly
not what they are doing with your little poppet. You shouldn’t name these things,
it isn’t your job.
Published in the Tenebrae journal of poetics.
Nat Loftus 