Summer Vacation in a Red Dodge Dart Convertible
My dad got a red Dodge Dart convertible when I was about four or five years old. “The Dodge Dart”1 is a poem about a summer road trip. My brother would want me to mention the chocolate milk I spilt on him in Palm Springs when it was 110 degrees. He’s still getting over it. For me the highlight of the trip was the Flintstone Village in South Dakota. Unfortunately I left the squirrel pillow at a Holiday Inn in Van Horn, Texas; I was devastated.
The Dodge Dart
We drove a red Dodge Dart
convertible on that three-week trip
when I was five and thought forever
was how long it took to the next stop.
My brother and I, our legs bare, stuck
to the vinyl in those days
before mandatory seatbelts, when
I could lie down in the back,
my head on my favorite squirrel pillow
and my mother’s lap. In so many
photographs commemorating that trip—
on canyon edges, in front of the carved
granite faces of dead presidents,
by Magic Mountain, my brother and I
look dazed, my hair pixie short and
his shirt always rumpled and half
tucked in. At the motel each night
we briefly came to life, when we had a pool
and shuffleboard and argued over who got
the rollaway while our parents drank
their carefully packed flasks of gin
and scotch. Each day my brother threatened
to eject me from the car, said the
cigarette lighter was really an eject button
connected to me—no matter where I sat.
And I amused myself by daring him
to press it, secretly hoping to be shot
out of that car, into the sky, and home
from that trip that even forty years later
we can’t stop talking about. As if it were
the only thing that ever happened to us. I recently celebrated three months on Substack, and so I am now listed in the Poetic Library, which was created by poet
who decided to create a listing of all the poets on Substack since Substack doesn’t have a Poetry category. I highly recommend her poetry. Check out the library and read more poetry!
1
“The Dodge Dart” first appeared in In Posse Review, December 2010, Issue 28.
Those were the days! Somehow we survived!
Probably 1968. I was born in 63. My mom would remember. It was probably the summer before I turned five in September.