One Car Garage
Chuck Berry made Maybelline
from the snarl of parts
he found hopelessly tangled
in a rough cut pine crate
on a high mossy shelf
above a calloused window
weeping jaundiced light
in trailing veins
across the fender skirts of a well-appointed
Cadillac shoehorned between
Mark Twain’s cobbled vernacular and Edward Hopper’s
blackened crucible
curved lip spackled
with the flat light of day and late night shadow.
White wall tires
suggest life preservers to Hank Williams
drowning in the deep plush
of the back seat
while Louis Armstrong and Arthur Miller
uncoil jumpers
and argue whether it’s red to red
black to black