1962 Karmann Ghia

• The damn thing tried to kill me
• and make it look like an accident.
• It was a sinister dark red,
• the color you’d get if
• you added black ink
• to blood.
• I bought it for $1,500.
• It then proceeded
• to plot my demise
• in a dozen different ways.
• Its first attempt:
• speeding down the highway,
• the steering wheel
• spun off in my hands.
• And how could I forget
• the time I put my foot
• down on the brake
• only to find the line
• mysteriously cut?
• Its final act of sabotage
• was a sharp right turn
• I swear I didn’t execute.
• It jumped the curb, took out
• a Union-Tribune vending box.
• I got the message.
• It wanted me out of the picture.
• The next day I took out an ad
• in the Auto Trader,
• sold it at a loss
• to the next poor soul.

Jackleen Holton’s poems have appeared in journals including Bayou, Kestrel, Natural Bridge, North American Review, Rattle, Sanskrit, Talking River, Serving House Journal, and Bellingham Review, which awarded her the 2014 49th Parallel Poetry Prize. She works as a poet-teacher with California Poets in the Schools and Border Voices.