Ghost Truck

Dusk one evening

dialing back to

right after Disco

was ditched to the tune

of bad boys.

My cousin, Dennis

in his ’67 GMC pickup truck

we met on Lincoln Street

along evergreen row

where the trees lined

the public swimming pool and park

now shuttered for fall and

the cool rush of football fever.

We were in rare form,

runners, tacklers.

He was

kicking up dust and

spinning donuts

in that GMC,

gears three on the tree

beating Bandit’s Trans-Am.

I spotted him

and turned around

his truck door open,

he glances down

watching the cut of his tires

in the gravel.

He spies me

showing off in a massive spin-twirl

dust clouds in the night

thick and swirling

I look up to see

headlights and the outline of a truck

the GMC gliding along

sans driver

it came up beside me

and hung there rather eerily

cruising the night like a

ghostly James Dean legend

sideswiping the stop sign

ricocheting off and

heading for a line of parked cars.

Then I see Dennis

running like a track star

swearing, sweating

clenching his jaw

sprinting to catch it.

In 2012, they finally

straightened the sign

but you can still tell where

it was slightly bent,

no further damage done.