Hot Rods
When the dragsters crash and burst into flames
with our love’s bad juju inside
the orange in the night sky reveals
the crinkled map where our past selves
are hidden. This is the next
testament: the footwork we’ve been working on
to jump with hope from the grandstand
down into the smoke. My love, there is no crater
like a crater of the soul. Perhaps the asphalt
can melt itself. Perhaps this cold
will pass. Perhaps the uphill shutdown
is not our harp after all.
*
My Time Dilation
I believed if I sweat, I could slow
the spin of the earth.
I figured the more hard-mowing,
the more moments of awareness,
and I thought an increase in jogs
through thinned parking lots
would preserve the mental movies
of my son learning to crawl.
I stacked my calendar. Had
another kid. Switched beer
for bench press and early-morning
pink incline hikes, where I
feared beads drying on
my temples when stopping
for drinks of water. With each
up-and-down I’d become
a little bit younger. I’d pause
the trajectory of the sun
to write down the exact
movements of a rabbit.
Use the dampness of my shirt
to delay my desiccation.
Collect my last sweat in a vial
to break later in my palm,
when I’m feeling off and like
a still, forgetful mortal.
*
KG Newman is a sportswriter who covers the Broncos and Rockies for The Denver Post. His first four collections of poems are available on Amazon and he has been published in scores of literary journals worldwide. The Arizona State University alum is on Twitter @KyleNewmanDP and more info and writing can be found at kgnewman.com. He is the poetry editor of Hidden Peak Press and he lives in Hidden Village, Colorado, with his wife and three kids.
