Car Trouble, But Personified

You call me because your car has broken down,
at the edge of Gone With The Wind,

chocolate cosmonauts honor Stalin
in your padded shoulders nearby, you tell me,

while ten blocks away, a dog barks
at the squirrel in Kilmer’s tree,

and a Balthus twelve-year-old
pulls a chariot with Bogey on it.

When I finally get to you
the clown, big shoes and all

jiggles the few lions Africa has left.
Oh, Harriet Belafonte of Samothrace,

your hands whirring behind the wheel
mad to the touch, and really beautiful,

must make me happy
like the Civil War Honest Old Abe abhorred.