After many false starts
and the rasping of the flywheel’s missing teeth,
the motor cranks up for one more trip.
Is there a place to go
after we have paid the mechanic, the dentist,
and the Man Who Wears the Star?—
Some ultimate haven,
a shrine of reincarnation,
where all those heaps without odometers
line up for the Grand Prix
running smoothly down elysian fields,
urged on by a voice that says,
“Every car from the States will have another life in Mexico.”

Maxine Cassin
from her book Against the Clock
Portals Press, 2003

Used with permission of the poet’s estate.