Rapid City, 1998

My aunt, my cousin, I
follow junkyard Jim around to the back
He pulls back the tall (rasp) gate
removes his sweat stained cap: "we're all pulling for him"
My railroad-man uncle, he means,
who waits in the hospital all yellow with betadine.
We're here to view his white Ford.

Place: weeds weep harsh rocks sigh ghosts of cars
fierce light dull off the dusty metal hides
a nursing home funeral with gravel beds
tired sunken headlights

we approach the newly dead
crumpled vehicle (the feeling of vitality here even still
old trucks that performed Work have it
it's what the cowboys squint about in the craggy, gritty commercials)
It lounges in the sun like a lion carcass

Smashed monument: my aunt hiccups the spilled oil air
and lifts her camera (snap):
My uncle's orange-blond head shattered this jagged back window

(flipped 7 times
all the blink red medical machines
I stutter out a stupidly painful: "How are you doing?"
Now useless legs stiff and strangely tiny
all he wants shaved ice spooned down his sandpaper throat)

push (squeal) open his driver's door grind (snap):
The gutted truck cabin with the rumpled McDonald's bag

"There," she directs me, backing from the scene
"stand next to the truck- for perspective"
I turn to the camera-eye and her mouse limp hair
don't know what face to wear before ("I want to die")
Dakota sun on me and my uncle's dirty dead Ford